As a frequent passenger on red eye flights across many carriers, you start to pick up on trends on airlines. On all of the red eyes I have taken before and after the merger with US Airways, it seems as in the coach cabin that they prefer to keep the lights on throughout the flight.
While some airlines may turn on a few lights during the beverage service, American seems to keep all of their lights on, and only in the economy cabin. In Business class, they do not keep the lights on.
As a data point, Delta always turns off the lights during their red eyes. In fact, I can think of a single red eye on Delta where they turned the lights on for the beverage service, and many people around me quickly complained and asked what they were doing. The flight attendants claimed they needed the lights on to see as they did the beverage service. This type of experience on Delta however is not the norm.
In the days of pre merger US Airways, Flight attendants would often turn on the lights during red eyes, 2-3x time hawk credit card offers, with little regard to the passengers sleeping. Personally, I prefer Delta for red eyes, given they have the most respect for passengers sleep.
What is your experience with domestic red eyes?
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Do you recall if this was an American Eagle flight? I’ve had Delta Connection flights with similar service, where the attendants didn’t seem to care. Granted, they weren’t red-eyes (they landed at midnight, so they just barely missed classification), but you’d think they’d keep the lights out…
@Hari This was mainline AA but on American eagle they also keep the lights on and its unacceptable
I flew american’s red eye from Las Vegas to Philly about a month ago and the coach lights were off. Sadly, the person next to me left her reading light on almost the entire time and it felt like I had a spotlight in my eyes.
This is why I always travel with a eye mask.
I’ve been on a few American red eyes in the past couple months, Vegas/New York, Seattle/New York and San Fran/New York. All have had their lights off.
LAX>EWR last Thursday left the cabin lights on for the first hour, then turned off until final descent.
@Hari – a flight arriving at Midnight is not close to being classified as a redeye. A redeye leaves around Midnight and arrives next morning – generally from West coast to East coast or even Midwest.