Need for new airport touted

Monday, July 10, 2000 | 11:02 a.m.

A proposed airport about 30 miles south of Las Vegas could be the ticket for reducing crowds at McCarran International, Sen. Harry Reid and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday.

Reid, D-Nev., hosted FAA Administrator Jane Garvey for a tour of recent renovations at McCarran, highlighting $100 million in work to refurbish the A gates, the airport's oldest terminal.

But Reid, Garvey and Clark County Aviation Department Director Randy Walker spent more time talking about the increase in passenger traffic, the limits to McCarran's growth potential, flight delays and passenger complaints.

Reid used the visit to promote his proposed "Passengers Bill of Rights" legislation, which would clarify rules for when airlines report delays and allow passengers off flights stuck on runways for more than 15 minutes.

Garvey said delays are increasing nationally. Beyond bad weather, the hub system that big airlines use to route most flights through just a few airports means that any delays can affect the entire national air-traffic system, she said.

"It is a big problem," Garvey said.

A recent call by commercial pilots unions to boycott "land-and-hold-short operations" means that the busiest airports -- Chicago's O'Hare, Miami International and Boston's Logan, where Garvey was recently director -- lose critical capacity during peak hours, she said.

That contributes to delays, Garvey said. Land-and-hold-short operations require a landing aircraft to stop before the intersection of two runways, allowing another aircraft to use the second runway for a simultaneous landing or takeoff.

The Air Line Pilots Association and Allied Pilots Association, the two national unions, are boycotting land-and-hold-short operations over concerns that extending the procedure to private "general aviation" and international flights is unsafe. The FAA has proposed including those types of flights in the procedure as a way to stretch capacity.

One option to alleviate the condition at busy airports is to "think more regionally," Garvey said. Feeder or reliever airports near the larger hubs could be modernized or built to handle more traffic, she said.

A proposed airport in the Ivanpah Valley, near the California state line, would be just such an airport, Garvey said.

The Ivanpah proposal passed the House, but the Senate still must act on it, Reid said.

Officials expect McCarran to reach its theoretical capacity of 55 million passengers a year by 2008.

Walker also made a pitch for the proposed airport.

"We're running out of space," he said. "We have a finite capacity. The community continues to grow rapidly."

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