Southwest's first overnight flights
History was made on February 13 when the airline's first proper overnight service took off. After all, many very late arrivals (or very early, depending on your viewpoint) land after 01:00, but this is not what it means.
In fact, it started with five such routes, each arriving very early on Valentine's Day. Nothing says 'I love you' more than arriving tired, smelly, and irritable after an overnight flight.
The first of five take-offs was WN5998. According to Flightradar24, it departed Los Angeles at 21:54 and arrived at Baltimore at 05:09 the next day, a 4h 15m trip. N8552Z, a 7.3-year-old Boeing 737-800, was deployed. It had flown from the Maryland airport to the West Coast's busiest airport and then returned.
Southwest has not had red-eye flights in its 54-year history, so it has always been highly unusual in the US sky. As hard as it might be to imagine, the airline couldn't schedule overnight services until 2017 due to its old reservation system.
The initial five services
They are shown on the following map and in the subsequent table. As is apparent, they're longer services to/from some of Southwest's major airports—great for connectivity and significant places for point-to-point traffic. They pass through various time zones.
In each case, overnight flights started on February 13, are operated daily, and are scheduled to be on the 737 MAX 8, but substitutions can and do occur.
The table only includes the most common times in February. The schedule varies in other months.
All its overnight routes (for now)
Southwest's schedule and booking window currently extends to the end of October. Using what the airline has submitted to Cirium Diio shows 1,043,877 flights between February 13 and October 31. That's an average of 4,000 flights daily. As always, things will be fine-tuned, especially later in the year.
Examining every planned service indicates that 6,244 flights—0.6% of the total and one in every 167—will be overnight, arriving at 05:00 or later.
For now, they will be on 30 routes, excluding any with just one or two departures scheduled. All flights will leave between 20:20 and 23:55 and arrive between 05:00 and 07:55.
They will cover an average of 1,777 nautical miles (3,291 km), over two and a half times Southwest's network-wide average.
Overnight flights from Hawaii to the mainland will begin on April 8. There will be six routes: Honolulu to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Phoenix; Kona to Las Vegas; and Kahului to Las Vegas and Phoenix.
They are probably the most significant for Southwest: they will open up new and more competitively timed connecting opportunities across the US, especially in the Midwest and the East.
Currently, most of the airline's mainland-bound flights arrive from the late afternoon to the evening, reducing onward options.
