Airlines at McCarran jockeying for passengers and attention

Thursday, Jan. 18, 2001 | 11:18 a.m.

The biggest airline at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport has a new look.

The No. 2 carrier has a new attitude.

And the fourth-busiest may be working on a new strategy.

In separate, unrelated events Wednesday:

Southwest, the masters of the show-and-tell media event, flew in a jet fresh off the assembly line and paid tribute to airline employees that have worked longest for the company in its 30-year history.

The Dallas-based company is modifying its fleet's color scheme, adding a canyon blue hue to the traditional desert gold, red and orange that has been a Southwest trademark from the airline's beginning.

Joyce Rogge, a Southwest vice president accompanying the plane on a western tour, said the new colors, designed by GSD&M, Austin, Texas, were inspired by southwestern canyon sunrises.

Southwest's two newest planes were painted in the new livery and furnished with all-leather seating and sent out to many of the airline's destinations to show it to employees and the company's most loyal customers. All of Southwest's new planes will get the new paint job -- 25 jets in 2001, 27 in 2002 and 26 in 2003. In addition, the airline's fleet of 346 jets will get the new paint and interiors when each plane takes its turn for routine maintenance.

Rogge said the entire makeover will take up to 10 years to complete. She did not say how much the airline is spending on the changes. The leather interiors, she said, are expected to be cost effective because they won't have to be replaced as often as the cloth seat coverings.

Among the guests to tour "Spirit 1," the name Southwest has given to the newly painted plane, was Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

Earlier in the day, Southwest's biggest rival in Las Vegas, Phoenix-based America West Airlines, conducted a conference call to explain the company's fourth-quarter loss of $32.1 million, 95 cents per share.

America West President Doug Parker and Chief Executive Officer William Franke said although the company had disappointing results for the quarter, some new trends are emerging.

Parker said there has been a 24 percent decline in aircraft reliability cancellations since the third quarter.

In July, the airline voluntarily cut its schedule by 3.5 percent, from 880 to 863 flights a day, after a blistering Department of Transportation report in May said America West was the second worst of 10 major carriers in on-time performance, canceled flights and lost luggage. The airline also had the highest number of passenger complaints.

In August, the FAA threatened to ground the carrier unless it fixed aircraft maintenance problems.

The airline's core customer base, chased away by those reliability problems last summer, is coming back, Parker said. Future bookings are up.

But unfortunately for America West, so are fuel prices. That, Parker and Franke said, is the primary reason the company showed losses instead of profits in the fourth quarter. Another reason for the losses: weather-related cancellations. Parker said there were 482 of them in the quarter.

The airline executives wouldn't talk about the one topic on the minds of most of the journalists and financial analysts participating in the company's conference call -- airline consolidation.

America West is often rumored to be takeover target of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines. But they had nothing to say about Delta or any other potential suitor.

"We're watching with interest on all the other transactions and will be most interested in how the regulators and the Department of Justice deal with those proposals," Franke said. "But we don't comment on discussions we have with other carriers. If we had discussions with other carriers on alliances, mergers and acquisitions, they would be confidential."

In another issue of interest to Las Vegas, Franke and Parker said the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Las Vegas-based National Airlines last month hasn't translated into any additional ticket sales for America West.

"We're not seeing anything material," Parker said. "They're (National) still flying, they're still selling tickets."

National uses Las Vegas as a hub, but only competes directly with America West on a handful of routes. National sought to cut into America West's market share by offering most of its flights in daylight hours, unlike America West, which has a high concentration of flights to and from McCarran after 10 p.m.

Meanwhile, a single new-flight announcement could be the first step in a strategy to link Las Vegas with one of Delta's hub cities, Salt Lake City, with greater flight frequency.

St. George, Utah-based SkyWest Airlines is expanding its fleet with 50-passenger twin-engine jets and will use one of them for a daily round-trip flight between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City in April.

SkyWest, which operates most of its planes in commuter partnerships with Delta and United Airlines, will begin Delta Connection flights between McCarran International Airport and Salt Lake City April 1.

Flights will leave Salt Lake City daily at 2:15 p.m., arriving in Las Vegas at 2:40, then leave Las Vegas at 3:15 p.m., arriving in Salt Lake City at 5:35.

SkyWest will use new Canadair Regional Jet aircraft for the flights. The airline currently has 16 of the jets in its fleet, 50 to be delivered in an existing order and has ordered 64 more to be delivered between mid-2002 and 2004.

The airline will compete on the Salt Lake City route with Southwest Airlines and Delta and other carriers, although SkyWest spokesman David Clark said the company looks at Delta as a partner, not a competitor.

"In fact, to a great degree, they (Delta) determine the need for adding flights," Clark said.

SkyWest, as Delta Connection, serves 37 cities from Salt Lake City, including service to Reno and Elko.

SkyWest has a similar marketing agreement with United Airlines and operates in Las Vegas as United Express on flights between McCarran and Palm Springs and Fresno, Calif.

Clark said the new Salt Lake City flight will add frequency on the route, even though SkyWest's plane will compete with larger aircraft. Both Delta and Southwest use Boeing 737s, carrying around 125 passengers, on the route.

The Canadair Regional Jets are less expensive to operate than a 737 and persons who have flown them say they fly at the same speed and altitude of the bigger jets.