Should You Choose Overnight or Crack-of-Dawn Flights?

Will You Feel Better on an Overnight or Early Morning Flight?

The answer to this question: is it better to fly overnight or during the day, is one that you can honestly only answer after you’ve flown a few times during each time. And honestly, until you’ve become a veteran flyer, you might not even have a full understanding of which type of flying feels best or works best for you.

For many years, I used to take redeye flights from Los Angeles to the East Coast to visit my family because it was more convenient for my dad to pick me up at the airport in the early morning than to fight his way through traffic from the outskirts into the city. However, I was taking the redeye flights to make things convenient.

In later years, I’ve also taken redeye or overnight flights for the specific purpose of maximizing my vacation time. By flying overnight, I can (in theory) spend my travel time sleeping rather than sitting on a plane doing nothing because it’s the middle of the day.

But is it really worth it, the redeye flight, all things considered? Do you really gain that much more vacation time and fun when you fly overnight to your destination? Are the hassles that invariably come with late night flights worth it, or is flying during the day a less stressful way to begin your vacation? Truthfully, the tickets aren’t even cheaper for every route.

(note: some of the links here are to websites with which I am an affiliate, and your purchases help fund my website!)

The Question: Can You Sleep on An Airplane?

A huge part of maximizing your time with an overnight flight is whether you can enjoy an in-flight snooze fest. Some people are really good at sleeping absolutely anywhere. Give them a pillow and an eye mask and they’re down for the count until the wheels touch the ground.

I wish this was me. I truly wish I could knock out on a plane and just sleep my way to the other side of the planet, but I’ve never really been that successful. On all those flights where I flew from LAX to Boston and JFK, I literally just watched episodes of “Law & Order” for five or six straight hours to get me there.

(I always flew JetBlue or Virgin America back then, and they both had televisions and tons of channels for your perusal in every seat)

Since then, I’ve taken a few overnight flights, mostly because that’s the only time the flights were available or I was flying so far around the planet that the the day turned to night because of the direction I was flying. I flew overnight when I went to Southeast Asia, and I also flew well into the evening on my way back to the United States.

Did I really get any good sleep on either of those flights or any of the others where I’ve been on the plane overnight? Nope. I sleep terribly on overnight flights, despite really enjoying the opportunity to “try” and sleep and save time traveling during the night instead of during the day.

Are You Wasting Time If You Fly During the Day?

The second question that might swirl through your head when you choose to take a long flight during the day is whether you’re wasting time when you sit on an airplane during the day instead of putting up with the redeye.

Should you just go for it and fly overnight, not caring about the sleep you’ll lose along the way? I’ve actually arranged some trips where my overnight flight paired reasonably well with activities the day of arrival, but I’ve had mixed results.

On my 2023 trip to Colombia, I had an overnight flight to Bogota that had us arrive at about 5 in the morning. We took a taxi to our hotel, which I’d paid for the night before, so we could check in immediately when we arrived – about 7 AM. We hung out in the room until about noon when our walking tour of the city started.

Overall, it actually worked quite well. However, I slept really poorly on the plane, and I had to juice myself up with lots of caffeine to make it through that first day. Good thing I was in Colombia I guess, right?

Consider Price Over Scheduling If You’re On a Budget

There are so many factors when it comes to scheduling a flight for your itinerary, especially when you’re thinking about a flight that will take you across an ocean or to another hemisphere. The opportunity to sleep on the plane and maximize your time is just one consideration.

In my mind, there’s no contest when it comes to sleeping on the plane and making the most of your time off. If you can easily sleep on a plane, definitely take the redeye. It’s one of the best ways to save money, and you can fit as much activity as possible into your overall itinerary.

If you’re not that comfortable sleeping on a plane, it’s best to arrange your itinerary carefully, so you don’t wear yourself out or feel like trash your first day of exploring. Try a short guided tour – maybe two or three hours at most – rather than an all-day thing where you’ll be walking from the moment you walk off the plane until it’s dark again.

Flying on an overnight plane ticket is a great time-saver and option for maximizing your itinerary, but don’t sacrifice the enjoyment you have in traveling by embarking on a redeye if it’s going to make you feel poorly when you disembark. Take a daytime flight and just relax your way to your destination. Gaining a few hours by taking a redeye is great, but not at the expense of your personal enjoyment of your vacation.

---

---