Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001 | 10:09 a.m.
Hundreds of airliners were to return to American skies today, just over 24 hours after federal agencies issued an unprecedented precautionary grounding order following terrorist attacks on U.S. targets.
Employees at McCarran International Airport and the 32 commercial airlines that use it worked to return to normal operations, well aware that the incidents that unfolded Tuesday could forever change how they serve passengers.
Hilarie Grey, a spokeswoman for McCarran, said the terrorist attacks that killed thousands of people in New York and Washington, D.C., also would result in heightened security measures at the airport.
While federal officials said they expected an order reopening the nation's airspace to take effect this morning, Grey said it would take considerably longer for flight schedules to return to normal.
"Many of the planes are out of place from their points of origin," Grey said. "Just because we get the order to resume does not mean there will be a full slate of flights right away. We recommend that people call the airlines in advance to be sure. Don't come here at 9 in the morning expecting things to be business as usual."
And, once operations begin, security measures will be at their highest levels, meaning passengers can expect major delays in boarding their flights.
Late Tuesday, McCarran officials were awaiting a "security amendment" from the FAA spelling out new security procedures. Airline personnel were awaiting an explanation of those rules to warn passengers in advance.
Grey said it's expected that the new procedures would be similar to those implemented in the wake of the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
"We'll open at the highest level of security and those protocols are time-intensive," Grey said.
That means Metro Police and possibly federal marshals will conduct hand searches of some bags at security checkpoints. Grey said passengers would be encouraged to bring fewer carry-on bags on planes.
Vehicles also will no longer be allowed to stop at the airport's departure curbs. And, only ticketed customers and not people meeting arriving passengers will be allowed to pass through security checkpoints to the gates.
When the highest security procedures were in place in previous years, it was recommended that passengers arrive at the airport 90 minutes to two hours in advance of flight times.
While activity is expected to intensify at McCarran today, Tuesday's shutdown was nearly as surreal as the dark images that were broadcast worldwide from the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe.
After the Federal Aviation Administration's grounding order took effect at 6:25 a.m. PDT, 74 planes -- 64 passenger airliners and 10 cargo carriers -- parked at McCarran. Airport officials did not have figures on how many planes normally park overnight in Las Vegas.
McCarran, the seventh busiest American airport in August with 450 arrivals and 450 departures every day, is normally swirling with activity at its counters and gates by late morning. But by noon Tuesday, the airport, which serves an average 110,000 passengers a day, was eerily quiet and incoming planes were parked in clusters all over the tarmac.
Aircraft of all varieties were scattered around the airport and passenger loading bridges normally hugging plane doors were parked several feet away from the jets so they couldn't be boarded.
Late Tuesday, the airport was closed and the few passengers who stayed in the terminal were asked to leave until planes began flying again.
Grey said about 80 percent of the flights destined for Las Vegas when the grounding order took effect made it to McCarran Tuesday.
Each airline has a different strategy for restarting service and accommodating stranded passengers.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, the busiest commercial carrier at McCarran with 169 daily operations, said all its planes were accounted for as of 8:05 a.m., PDT, Tuesday.
Southwest parked 14 planes at McCarran and announced that all customers with a confirmed reservation could request a full refund from the airline regardless of the travel date.
America West Airlines, Tempe, Ariz., the No. 2 carrier at McCarran, where it has a hub operation, also accounted for all its planes early Tuesday.
The airline encouraged passengers to call for details on the resumption of service.
National Airlines had a different problem than its competitors: Because all its flights are either to or from its Las Vegas base, about half of the company's planes were en route to McCarran when the FAA issued its order to ground aircraft.
National spokesman Dik Shimizu said Las Vegas passengers from Newark, N.J. and Philadelphia landed in Indianapolis, and a flight from Miami stopped in New Orleans. Two flights from Chicago -- one from O'Hare Airport and another from Midway Airport -- landed in Denver and Peoria, Ill., respectively.
And, a National flight that took off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport stopped in Rockford, Ill., while another from Washington D.C.'s Reagan National Airport set down in St. Louis.
A courtroom date for National also was postponed. The company, operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, was scheduled to appear in a status hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Las Vegas Tuesday afternoon, but that was delayed.
Travel experts fielding customer inquiries Tuesday recommended that persons planning to travel this week contact their airlines for information.
"We tell them we don't know any more than what they're hearing in the media," said Leo Falkensammer, vice president and chief financial officer of Prestige Travel and Cruises, Las Vegas.
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