Doing a Ryan Air from London?
 

When flying to most detinations in Europe from the east coast, nearly all the affordable flights are 'red eyes' that take off in the late afternoon and arrive in the early morning. However, it seems a lot of flights to London are 'same day' - leaving in the AM, arriving in the PM. Wouldn't it make sense to get one of these cheap London flights,arrive in the evening, and then catch a Ryan air or whatever to your final destinaion (Paris, Rome, etc) to avoid the lost day-red eye flights?

This can work out really well, but if you have to transfer airports, I'd leave lots of time, particularly if your arriving airport is Heathrow (I had significant delays coming and going from there on my recent trip). Note that BMI flies to many destinations from Heathrow on budget fares - http://www.flybmi.com .

I'm a bit confused by your question -- do you mean take a transatlantic flight that will arrive in the evening rather than the morning?

Well, you'll have to pay a night's hotel with that strategy then. So even if the flight is cheaper than the redeye, the trip may not be cheaper.

I never seem to have enough time to be able to use the budget carriers. The connection times never seem particularly convenient for me -- as you say, basically the redeye never takes me in early enough to catch a budget airlines flight.

I checked through the whole scheme of flying to London and then going to the final destination with Ryan Air. Ryan Air flies out of Stansted airport so you are going to have to take a bus because you will typically come into Heathrow or Gatwick. I seem to recall the time between airports was at least 2-3 hours.

EasyJet has some flights from Gatwick, so that's also worth looking into, particularly if you are arriving there.

In my case, leaving from YVR, I often have a choice of either a 2-connection flight; or a flight to London, a possible change of airports, and a budget flight. The second choice can be more appealing in such cases and might be how I choose to do Italy.

On my last trip, I did

YVR-LHR-CDG-SXF (Berlin Schoenefelde)-LTN (London Luton)-LHR-YVR

with a combination of Air Canada, BMI, EasyJet, public transportation between airports, and of course reasonable-length stays in each city.

2 problems with your thinkings:

1. Most people get off work in the afternoon on the E. Coast, and then can get the overnight flight to Europe. No need to take time off work, no need to "waste time" sleeping at home. What's better than that?

2. You arrive LHR in the evening with these day flights. It takes 3+ hours to go through customs/immigration and transfer to Stansted. And you have to check-in there like 40 minutes before take off. So, there are very few flights on Ryanair that you can even make it to. Otherwise, you'll have to spend a night in London. Also, since many airports Ryanair use in Europe are secondary airports way outside city center, with their shuttle bus the only means of transport, you may not arrive at the hotel at your destination way past midnight. How is that a better way to travel?