The Midnight Rush Hour Over the Atlantic

Every evening, hundreds of planes leave North America and fly east over a completely dark ocean. By breakfast, almost all of them have landed in Europe. Why do airlines squeeze one of the busiest ocean crossings on Earth into the middle of the night? Five reasons: time zones, one plane doing a round trip every day, morning connections at the big hubs, airport night limits, and the jet stream with the tracks redrawn over the North Atlantic every day. Chapters 0:00 The river of lights 1:13 Reason 1: Time zones 2:12 Reason 2: One plane, one round trip 3:25 Reason 3: The morning wave 4:03 Reason 4: Airports go to sleep 4:54 Reason 5: Tracks and the jet stream 6:41 No radar over the ocean 7:38 Five reasons, one river Sources NATS (Shanwick record, July 2023): https://nats.aero/blog/2023/07/shanwi... North Atlantic Tracks: https://skybrary.aero/articles/north-... Delta daytime flight: https://thepointsguy.com/news/delta-a... Night flights and connections (IATA): https://www.iata.org/en/iata-reposito... Frankfurt operating hours: https://www.fraport.com/en/sustainabi... Heathrow night flights: https://www.heathrow.com/company/loca... BA112 record, Feb 2020 (NPR): https://www.npr.org/2020/02/09/804266... Space-based ADS-B separation (NATS): https://www.nats.aero/news/new-separa...