Big air tour operator moving 19 aircraft to North Las Vegas

Wednesday, Aug. 25, 1999 | 11:30 a.m.

Scenic Airlines, the nation's largest air tour operator, is moving much of its operations back to the North Las Vegas Airport.

The company, which has a fleet of 24 planes and employs about 380 people, has shuffled between the North Las Vegas terminal and the executive terminal on the west side of McCarran International Airport in the past six months.

Planes will begin returning to the North Las Vegas airport over the weekend. The company already had some offices at the terminal and was paying rent on space there.

Scenic, which flies about 25,000 passengers a month to the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and southern Utah's two national parks, will fly its 19 twin-engine DeHavilland Twin Otters from North Las Vegas and its five larger Fokker F-27 planes from McCarran.

Scenic was acquired for $12.4 million from SkyWest Airlines late last year by Eagle Canyon Airlines, which is based at McCarran. Company officials opted to keep the Scenic name.

When the Scenic sale closed in March, Eagle Canyon consolidated the operation at McCarran and sold Scenic's buses used to transport passengers from hotels to the North Las Vegas terminal.

David Young, chief executive officer of Scenic, said the business plan changed to include North Las Vegas again when it was determined the executive terminal at McCarran could not accommodate the large number of passengers Scenic brought to the operation.

Young said the North Las Vegas terminal is tailor-made for air tour operations so the decision was made to return and the company signed a $3.1 million agreement with Travelways and Nevada Charter to bus passengers.

"The move back to North Las Vegas was paramount to the efficient operation of the company," Young said. "While the majority of tours utilize the Twin Otter aircraft, the company's F-27 fleet will continue to operate from McCarran, concentrating on the Asian market."

Young said the focus on Asian tourists on the 44-passenger F-27s is possible because the company can rely upon a set number of customers every day that have prepaid tours in package deals. On any overflow, Scenic dispatches enough 19-passenger Twin Otters to accommodate the number of customers it has that day.

Randy Walker, director of Clark County's aviation division, said it has always been the airport's plan to base air tour operators at suburban airports, not McCarran.

"We look at this as a positive move for McCarran," Walker said. "The nice thing is that it frees up scarce airspace for the larger aircraft."

He explained that when wind conditions require air traffic controllers to guide planes to one set of parallel runways, the slower Twin Otter aircraft can clog the landing pattern.

Walker acknowledged that more planes at North Las Vegas will mean more noise and some residents living near the airport may not appreciate the additional air traffic that will be generated there.

Young said noise shouldn't be an issue because the Twin Otter is one of the quietest planes in the air. The company invested $500,000 in modifications on each of the 19 Twin Otters to silence the planes for their trips over the Grand Canyon.

The air tour industry is embroiled in a dispute with the National Park Service and the Federal Aviation Administration over proposed regulations to reduce flights and restore natural quiet to the Grand Canyon. Scenic officials have helped lead the industry's fight to maintain the number of flights it has.