jcwoman

I'm beginning to plan a trip to Spain, hoping to go about this time next year. I like to plan early, so I am looking at flight times. I'm in the Washington DC area. From what I can see so far, all the non-stop flights are red-eyes. I checked JFK also and that's the same thing. Does anybody know if there are daytime nonstop flights between the atlantic coast and Madrid? (I have trouble sleeping on planes, so a red eye will get me there in horrible condition.)

David-A

If you are certain it has to be direct to Madrid, but are happy with any departure point on the whole of the Atlantic coast of the (presumably North) America, then work your way through the options:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid%...d_destinations

Why do you want direct?

UAPremExecflyer

There are no daytime non-stops from the US East coast to Madrid.
If you want a daytime TATL, your only options are into LHR from IAD, JFK (possibly EWR) and BOS. You can overnight at Heathrow - in one of many hotels close by - and continue the next morning to Spain.

jcwoman

Thank you all for the confirmation, I'll probably have to suck it up. (Answer for David-A: If I fly IAD -JFK-MAD or something similar it won't be non-stop. But I was just looking at the TATL section to see if there were any daytime flights.)

I'm curious, anybody know why?

Gagravarr

As I understand it, there are two reasons for the lack of daytime US -> EU flights. Firstly, there's the effect of curfews at both ends combined with the timezone and flight length, which means there's only a small window in which you can leave the US once the airport opens but still make it to Europe before they close for the night. Secondly, there's the way the tracks across the North Atlantic work, which means that during daylight hours all tracks are westbound. Eastbound daylight flights therefore have to take a less optimal route, which adds to cost, and can mean longer flights which makes the curfew-to-curfew thing even harder to meet.

jcwoman

That's very interesting, thanks!

CaptainMiles

Another two reasons are onward connections and efficient aircraft utilization.

An eastbound flight with a 7am departure from the US East Coast would get to Europe at about 8pm local time (7 hours flight plus 6 hours time difference). Few connections would have come in that early in the morning to meet the 7am departure, and few connections would be available same day onward to other European destinations, because not that many EU flight depart late at night due to curfews at their destinations. So for a daytime flight to be viable there would have to be enough of a O/D traffic to fill that aircraft, consistently. NYC-LON works, but few other pairs would. WAS-MAD certainly would not.

And then there is aircraft utilization. If that aircraft that arrived at 8pm in Europe were to turn right around, it might depart for the US at 10pm. Meaning it would arrive in the US at about midnight (8 hours flight time minus 6 hours time difference). Again, no onward connections same day from the US, as there are virtually no departures in the 1-5am window. An alternative would be to have the aircraft sit all night in Europe for a morning departure. But that is bad aircraft utilization. The airlines can achieve the same morning departure from Europe by flying TATL eastbound overnight.

IAN-UK

One further reason is the lack of point-to-point demand for high-yield seats on day-time flights.

Most business travellers (or their employers!) who fly premium-class are happier with the efficiency of flying overnight. Daytime would waste a day and probably cost another night's hotel costs.

lhrsfo

And, perhaps, a final reason is that Madrid is one hour ahead of London - which makes it even more difficult to have a flight leaving the East Coast and arriving at a sensible time in MAD, because the nominal flight time is an hour longer.

So, a combination of longer routing, an extra hour lost through time changes, limited demand on the route in the first place and inefficiency of aircraft usage means it ain't gonna happen.

It really only happens into London - if it were to spread elsewhere, MAD would probably not be the first. It's a shame as I always take the day flight if I can - much less jetlag.

pdpgps

US Airways has a daily flight to Barcelona and Madrid out of PHL (6.5hr flight with tailwind). Red eye flight that leaves typically around 6-7pm EST. The planes are A330's that I think make the flight from PHL to MAD/BAR and lands around 0800-0900 local time. Plane gets turned around for a few hours and heads back to PHL 1200-1300 local time and arrives in PHL at 3pm EST (7.5hr flight going into the wind).

I just took this flight on a weds night and returned on saturday. Envoy class is sooo money on this flight!

Palal

What curfews?! MAD is not FRA or LHR and has no curfews.

As you correctly pointed out, it has to do more with connections and plane utilization.

What really sucks IMO is lack of redeyes going westbound to the west coast, leaving at 2AM from, say, LHR and getting to SFO/LAX around 5-6AM. Again this also has to do with connections and fleet utilization, although, IMO, this is much more sensible than having LHR-SFO leave at noon or even 3PM.

LupineChemist

I find the redeye to be best for jetlag. I wake up extra early on eastbount TATL days and just sleep. I get there feeling a bit groggy but I basically have no jetlag going east.