LV losing European flight

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 1998 | 11:54 a.m.

CityBird, a discount international carrier based in Brussels, is ending its Las Vegas service next week.

A Los Angeles-based spokesman for the company said the airline did not consistently have enough seats filled on its weekly Brussels-to-Las Vegas flights to make the route lucrative.

Through September, McCarran International Airport reported CityBird served 7,968 passengers in 1998 -- less than half of capacity.

Conrad Barrerio, manager of sales support for CityBird's U.S. operations, said the company made its decision to pull out of Las Vegas after a year-long trial. It is now attempting to develop agreements with other airlines to connect CityBird customers from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

Barrerio said his company will continue to fly directly from Brussels to Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif.; and Miami and Orlando, Fla. It is exploring opening a northeastern U.S. gateway in Baltimore.

"Most of the traffic we had was inbound," Barrerio said. "After a certain amount of time as a test market, we made the decision to discontinue it."

Critics have said CityBird has done little to market its inexpensive flights to Europe to Las Vegas travelers. The company offered round-trip nonstop flights to Brussels for about $600 on extended range MD-11 and Boeing 767 jets.

The cutback comes on the heels of Gov. Bob Miller's trip to Europe in which he attempted to encourage additional nonstop service to Las Vegas. With CityBird out of the picture, the city's only direct link to Europe is Condor Airlines' nonstop flights from Frankfurt and Cologne.