Over the past several years, we have watched Hawaii red-eyes evolve from something many travelers avoided into the dominant way of flying home.
When we analyzed current schedules earlier this year, we found that more than 55% of Honolulu departures now leave between 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. Overnight flying from Hawaii has become the rule rather than the exception, and nearly all of those flights have one thing in common. They depart Hawaii at night and head east to the mainland.
That’s why Southwest’s newest Hawaii schedule immediately stood out. Instead of adding another overnight flight home from Hawaii, the airline is adding one in the opposite direction, with a 2:45 a.m. departure from Las Vegas that arrives in Honolulu at 6:10 a.m. Hawaii time.
The overnight Hawaii flight pattern has flipped.
The familiar Hawaii red-eye has always worked with the clock rather than against it. Travelers leave Hawaii late in the evening, attempt to sleep during much of the flight, and wake up on the mainland the next morning. Airlines benefit from efficient aircraft utilization, while many travelers accept the tradeoff because it lets them squeeze another day out of an already expensive Hawaii vacation.
That combination has changed Hawaii flying. What still remains unusual is the same idea, but heading west rather than east. Instead of sleeping on the way home, you sleep on the way in, and Hawaii greets you between five and six in the morning, whether you’ve slept or not.
Southwest joins Hawaiian on one special route for now.
Southwest is not introducing the first westbound overnight flight into Hawaii. Hawaiian Airlines already operates a similar Las Vegas to Honolulu schedule, departing at about 1:55 a.m. and reaching Honolulu at 5:15 a.m. Southwest’s new flight leaves less than an hour later and follows nearly the exact same route.
The more than six-hour flight appears in Southwest’s latest schedule extension into spring 2027, the same update that brought back nonstop service to Kauai and Kona from San Diego, routes the airline had dropped in 2022, when it was thinning service elsewhere in Hawaii.
Instead of creating a new concept, Southwest is betting that enough travelers from Las Vegas want to arrive in Hawaii at the beginning of the day to support another carrier on the schedule.
The middle of the night departure was never the point.
Airlines don’t create a 2:45 a.m. flight because most people want to leave at 2:45 a.m. The value may be less in the departure and more in what the aircraft does after it lands.
The Southwest jet touches down in Honolulu at 6:10 a.m., turns right back around, and flies the morning trip home that travelers actually compete for, the one that lands on the mainland in the afternoon with some of the day still ahead. That desirable flight home only exists because a plane is sitting in Honolulu early, and a plane is only there because someone else flew the overnight to put it there.
The arguably more comfortable return is based on the red-eye’s arrival. Book the 2:45 a.m. flight, and you are riding the half of the flight pairing that nobody designed for any human to really enjoy.
Landing before breakfast changes the trip.
Arriving in Honolulu at 6:10 a.m. creates a very different first day than arriving in the afternoon. A traveler steps off the jet as the island is barely waking up, with rental counters and breakfast spots still ahead of the crowds, and depending on the itinerary, the overnight can mean another hotel night on the front end.
The early arrival creates obvious challenges. Most Hawaii hotel rooms will not be ready until midafternoon, which can leave a just-landed traveler with a rental car, a pile of luggage, and too many empty hours before a room opens up.
The overnight flights in both directions ask the same question. Are the hours you gain worth the night of sleep you give up?
Would you fly into Hawaii overnight?
We’ve covered Hawaii red-eyes from the time Southwest resisted them, through the carrier’s decision to embrace them, and more recently, how travelers can sometimes avoid them with careful planning. A nearly 180-degree shift.
The fare may look good, the way overnight fares often do. So the question is, would you take the 1:55 am or the 2:45 a.m. to Honolulu, hopefully for a cheaper seat and for a full first day, or is arriving in Hawaii at that hour already wrecking your day?
Lead Photo Credit: © Beat of Hawaii.
By Rob and Jeff, Beat of Hawaii.
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Wow, the things folks “complain” about … LOL.
I did HNL “red-eyes” – and many besides HNL – for nearly 30 years. Some inbound from the Mainland, the others from the Orient. The only difference was I had a “reserved window seat” – in the cockpit – and was flying the airplane. You are welcome.
30 years … sure, got sleepy sometimes, but it was not a big issue and didn’t bother me.
The drill: arrive in HNL, go to the hotel, grab a few hours sleep, head for the beach or pool, do lunch (or whatever else you’ve planned), have a couple of happy hour drinks, then dinner, and off to bed again.
Sometimes you’d get a day off, but basically it’s “rinse and repeat” for 13 days straight for nearly 30 years. Different motivations perhaps, but still no problem-o.
Dickie—you’re missing a major point here. Unlike the flight crew, who can head straight to their hotel rooms, we bleary eyed travelers can’t check in til midafternoon. So yes, those 8-9 hours where we’re in no-man’s land hotel wise, is a royal pain !!
Frankly this sounds like a flight designed for Hawaiians – a full day in Vegas followed by the flight and you are home bright and early.
I think you’re missing the point on the inbound HNL flight customer. I take this as a local returning, because it’s what I’d take. Not a tourist having to mill about for hours and hours with or without luggage and finding something to do until they can check in to their hotel – along with the obvious, which is to be PF or RP depending on route.
The bigger question is the airline staff dealing with post 2am LV travelers after a late night out…lol
I would definitely pass on this one. I don’t want to start out exhausted.
These ‘red-eyes’ might work okay for Easterners, but suck for Westerners. How are you supposed to sleep in a 3-n-3 seating arrangement? The guy in the window seat needs to use the restroom and the people in the seats ahead of you have reclined them. Bump, thump, tug on seatback, wake your row to climb over them and wake the people in front of you as you grab their seats backs, trip over someone’s legs. Then the return trip. Seriously!?
Then there are those of us who need CPAP machines to sleep. How are we going to do that??? I remember trying to get west bound from Maui and there were four flights, on day flight and three red-eyes. This is ‘service’?
The flight I’ve found annoying (took it twice) is the HA HNL-JFK nonstop that leaves HNL at 3:09 pm and gets in just before 7 am.
The problem: it’s hard to fall asleep when you’re still on Hawaii time. When you land is when you’d be in bed. But then it’s morning and you won’t sleep much. So it’s a day or two of being exhausted.
My understanding of the rationale for the timing was to line up with a bank of flights from JetBlue when HA left out of Terminal 5.
Presumably it’s doing the same with AA now that it’s part of OneWorld in Terminal 8. Flying nonstop is nice. But you pay the price on the return.
A positioning flight is a positioning flight.
The load factor LAS-HNL is going to be abysmally low.
As for Southwest? They are the Lost Souls of the airline biz right at the moment. The old magic is gone– and they have no hope of competing toe2toe with DL and UAL.
We probably won’t do it from the mainland, but we have island hopped early in the day.
Our resort lets you enjoy the resort from midnight of your arrival day to midnight of the departure day. We can drop the luggage and they keep it secure. They text us when our room is ready and our baggage will be in the room when they get there.
The holding of bags is a very common service at hotels. Resort access is less common.
As described, no way. But – as a Hawaii resident, if I was flying lie-flat seat on the way home to the islands I could see that working well. An extra day of visiting family or vacationing. Maybe squeeze one more bike ride in, then clean up, pack, have a late-ish dinner, head to the airport, skip the lines and get ready for 4-8 hours of sleep, before arriving home early in the am, with the day in front to unpack, unwind, stare at the sun to reorient your biological clock, and then rack out that night.
This new flight was a head scratcher to me initially. Then I thought about Who they might be targeting for this flight. Las Vegas is the ninth island, a diaspora driven by work opportunity. If a homesick kama’aina wants to come over without taking off an extra day of work and just visit family and friends vs do touristy things this might be a nice option. The airline might get some value from advancing the schedule for reposition the plane too?