A red-eye is an overnight flight that leaves late at night and lands early the next morning. The name comes from the tired, red eyes you tend to step off with. They are popular because they save a day and often a hotel night, but they come with their own quirks.
There is no fixed length. A red-eye is defined by when it flies, not how long. In practice most are medium to long-haul, roughly 4 to 8 hours, which is exactly the range that fits inside a single night. A common example is a west-to-east flight across the United States, such as Los Angeles to New York at around 5 hours, or a transatlantic hop like New York to London at about 6 to 7 hours.
Two things stack up. First, the flight itself eats several hours. Second, if you are flying east, you are also losing hours to the time change. A flight that leaves the US west coast at 10 PM can land on the east coast around 6 AM local, having crossed three time zones on top of the five hours in the air. Fly the Atlantic and you can leave in the evening and land at breakfast time.
Some people sleep fine, others barely at all. The shorter red-eyes are the hardest, because by the time you settle in it is nearly time to land. A window seat, an eye mask, and skipping the screen help. So does knowing your real arrival time so you can plan when to try to sleep.
Pick your route and a late departure time in the FlightBeat calculator and it will show you the exact arrival time in the destination's local zone, and flag that you land the next morning. That makes it much easier to plan the night.
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