America West changes will help New Yorkers get to LV

Friday, Jan. 26, 2001 | 11:19 a.m.

America West Airlines' plan to shuffle its Las Vegas schedule to put more daytime flights into the city will be accomplished without adding any employees to the local station.

A spokeswoman for Phoenix-based America West, the second-busiest air carrier at McCarran International Airport, said some shifts will be adjusted for the approximately 1,000 America West employees working in Las Vegas to accommodate the schedule changes.

America West announced the retiming of eight late-night flights -- about 9 percent of its Las Vegas schedule -- to daytime routes. The move should help the local tourism industry, since those flights to and from the city will be operated at more convenient times.

The switch will mark the first time in several years that America West will have more daytime flights than late-night operations here. The carrier, which uses McCarran as one of its three hub airports, has had a schedule heavy on red-eye flights in order to maximize the use of its aircraft.

The schedule change occurs April 1 and will be implemented as a result of America West taking delivery of new planes. The company announced last year that it is getting several Airbus Industrie 319 and 320 twin-engine jets this year. The company did not specify what types of planes it plans to use when the new schedule takes effect.

Those models of Airbus planes can accommodate between 120 and 140 passengers.

Two of the eight flights being rescheduled involve the New York City market, one each from Newark, N.J., and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Other nonstop flights being changed will arrive from Atlanta; Detroit; Minneapolis; Los Angeles; Hartford, Conn.; and Tucson, Ariz.

The retiming of the Kennedy Airport flight will give America West departures to Las Vegas at 7:30, 8:30 and 9:30 a.m., each day, as well as two in the evening.

"(New York) is our biggest market into Las Vegas," said Janice Monahan, a spokeswoman for America West. "These (daytime) flights are something our customers have been asking for and this is our effort to meet our customers' needs."

America West's biggest rival on the Kennedy Airport route, Las Vegas-based National Airlines, also has reported that its New York and Newark routes are among the company's most lucrative.

An aviation industry expert says he doesn't see America West's latest move as an attempt to hurt National, which last month filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

"I just see it as an airline attempting to maximize the use of its resources," said Mike Boyd of The Boyd Group, an Evergreen, Colo. aviation consultant. "New York-to-Las Vegas is obviously a very good route."

America West grew its Las Vegas market share by 13.5 percent over 1999 despite averaging only one more flight a day in 2000. McCarran statistics show the airline served 5.9 million passengers in 2000 -- about 16 percent of the 36.8 million that came into the airport that year.

America West trails only Southwest Airlines in the number of passengers flown to and from Las Vegas, but it offers the most nonstop destinations -- 41 -- of any carrier serving McCarran.