After more than 50 years without scheduling a single redeye flight, Southwest has finally made the move. The initial batch of redeyes start in February, but the airline just released its summer schedule and the airline will be up to 33 routes by then.
I think conventional wisdom suggests that this is mostly a way to reduce unit costs, something that has been a real concern at Southwest as of late. By flying long-hauls overnight, the airline can increase utilization, and that lowers unit costs. This is absolutely a great benefit, but there is more to it than just that. This helps to improve the airline’s network.
I’m going to use a couple of examples to show what I mean, but first, let me start with the map we used in this week’s Cranky Network Weekly showing which flights will operate as redeyes next summer.
The benefit in Hawaiʻi has been discussed regularly, and it’s obvious. Because of how far it is from there to the East Coast, not operating redeyes means that it is just about impossible to fly too far east without spending the night somewhere. Now, Southwest can fly redeyes from the islands to the Western US and connect from there, or it can fly daylight flights to the Western US and connect to redeyes from there.
But there is a real benefit to travel within the mainland as well. As you can see on the map, the biggest city on the East Coast is Baltimore. It has redeyes from 12 different cities as far east as Denver. Every decent-sized city on the West Coast has a redeye to BWI with the strange exception of Oakland. I have no idea why Oakland is redeye-free, but that’s probably a question for another post.
As a resident of Long Beach, I was semi-excited to see that even we will get a redeye to BWI. (If you’re wondering why I was semi-excited, it’s because I always like to see us get new destinations… but you will not find me on a redeye if I can avoid it.) With that in mind, I decided to take a look at a random July Monday in 2025 and compare it to 2024 to see just how this changes the game.
Long Beach has 3 fewer daily flights in 2025 than in 2024. That’s primarily because poor performers to Colorado Springs and Kansas City are gone. Salt Lake also drops from 2x to 1x daily. But more notably, Chicago drops from 2x to 1x daily while BWI gets that new flight. I imagine these last two changes are related.
Chicago is of course an important destination, but it’s also the most useful connecting hub to the Northeast US without flying to BWI. The addition of a redeye to BWI allows Southwest to maintain connectivity around that region while being able to reduce Chicago to 1x daily. That should improve profitability in that market.
It’s the same situation in San Diego and in San Francisco, though some cities keep their Chicago frequencies and just enjoy the additional connectivity BWI offers.
I should note that the filed schedule in Long Beach doesn’t show any of the reduced turn times that Southwest has been talking about. If anything, Long Beach has some flights with slightly longer turn times, so that benefit has yet to be built in. That makes a year-over-year comparison cleaner.
This isn’t just about Long Beach, however. Looking through the West Coast cities, there was one that really stood out: Seattle.
Outside of Las Vegas which has five redeyes, it’s Los Angeles and Seattle that have the next most redeyes at four. Los Angeles may not be very surprising, but Seattle has never been point of strength for the airline.
The new redeyes from Seattle go to BWI, Chicago/Midway, Houston/HOU, and Nashville. Southwest hasn’t flown BWI daily since before the pandemic. Last summer it came back at 1x weekly, but now with the redeye, it goes daily again. Houston last flew before the pandemic while Nashville last flew daily in 2021. It was 2x weekly last summer, and it will be 8x weekly next year. Chicago already flies today, but it now has 1 flight move to a redeye.
This vastly improves Southwest position in the region. Seattle in summer is a huge destination, so this will make it easier for Southwest to serve its customers in other cities who want to go to Seattle. Connectivity through the east isn’t always that great, so this is a real change. And redeyes make the change possible.
In these situations, Southwest can decide whether it makes more sense to fly the airplane or sit it on the ground on the West Coast overnight. If that’s the choice, then you’re really only talking about variable costs that need to determine whether a flight is worth operating. And that lower cost base opens up opportunities that might not otherwise make sense.
So yes, cost is a part of this, but it also creates new connectivity and opportunity throughout the network. As is often the case at Southwest, this should happened long, long ago.
