McCarran business up

Monday, Aug. 6, 2001 | 10:58 a.m.

Two airlines with a small presence in Las Vegas are adding flights to and from McCarran International Airport.

Delta Air Lines commuter partner Comair resumed flights in Las Vegas last week after a three-month pilots strike that began in March. Cincinnati-based Comair, which flies 50-passenger twin -engine commuter jets, resumed flights between Las Vegas and Tulsa, Okla . The addition brings the total number of cities Comair serves to 87, with a total of 511 flights as of Aug. 1.

Meanwhile, Midwest Express Airlines, which already offers six flights a week between Las Vegas and its corporate headquarters city, Milwaukee, will nearly double its nonstop operations beginning Nov. 1.

Midwest Express, which has a fleet of twin-engine DC-9 and MD-80 series jets, also will shuffle its arrival and departure times to later in the evening on its existing service.

The new flights, which will operate five times a week, will arrive and depart from Las Vegas in the morning.

The number of flights and airline seats coming into McCarran International Airport increased in July, a possible indication that airlines are willing to test the leisure market since business travel budgets are drying up.

The number of average daily departures from McCarran increased 1.5 percent in July to about 446 flights a day. That's a 2.9 percent increase over the number of flights that operated at McCarran in July 2000.

No carrier serving McCarran had a net decrease in the number of flights to the airport, but some juggled their fleets and are using smaller planes, resulting in reduced capacity for some airlines. Overall, there are more seats coming into Las Vegas than there were a month ago.

"I think most of them (airlines) are just doing everything they can to get people in the airplanes," said Mike Boyd, an aviation consultant based in Evergreen, Colo. "Las Vegas is becoming a very important business destination as well as a leisure destination, but with revenues dropping, the airlines are putting leisure and business fare sales out there."

Boyd said the airlines' attention to Las Vegas is more evidence that the city is less susceptible to economic downturns.

"They know that walking down the Strip is worth the price of admission," Boyd said.

America West Airlines, the No. 2 carrier serving McCarran, led the increase with new daily flights between Las Vegas and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and San Diego. The Tempe, Ariz.-based carrier also added frequency on flights to and from Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix for a total of 23 new flights per week. Those flights added 476 seats a day in capacity for a total of 12,198.

No. 1 McCarran carrier Southwest Airlines added two daily flights between Las Vegas and Orange County, Calif., during the month, increasing daily capacity by 266 to 22,444 a day.

No. 3 United added one daily flight, to and from San Francisco, and juggled its fleet for a net increase in 64 seats daily to 4,918 a day.

Las Vegas-based National Airlines turned a six-day-a-week operation between Las Vegas and New York into a daily flight, increasing capacity by an average 25 seats a day to 5,500. National, No. 4 by seat capacity but No. 5 at McCarran by the number of passengers served, is operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Northwest Airlines, American Trans Air and Sun Country Airlines kept the same number of flights in July as they had in June, but made some fleet changes that reduced capacity slightly. Northwest now has 44 fewer seats a day to 1,958, American Trans Air has 43 fewer to 715 daily seats and Sun Country has 39 fewer for 640.

Overall, capacity climbed 1.3 percent to 64,820 seats -- a 3.1 percent increase over the 62,866 the airport had at the same time in 2000.

The Las Vegas markets that benefitted most from airline flight juggling were Orange County's two daily flights (261 new seats a day) and New York, which added a daily flight and a weekly flight (149 new seats a day average). Denver, San Diego and San Francisco also had capacity gains.

Markets that lost some capacity were Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; El Paso, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Milwaukee; and Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. All were fractional decreases resulting from fleet changes.

McCarran's July report also showed Southwest continues to dominate the Las Vegas market, holding 34.6 percent of the share of all seats available for sale. That's equal to the share of the next three competitors combined.