Vegas air tour traffic plunges 50 percent

Thursday, Sept. 20, 2001 | 10:46 a.m.

Air tours over the Grand Canyon, a highlight for many Las Vegas visitors from overseas, are off by 50 percent following last week's deadly terrorist attack.

One of Southern Nevada's busiest air tour operators, Air Vegas, has laid off 35 people, about one-third of its work force, while the world's largest tour company, Las Vegas-based Scenic Airlines, has been able to avoid layoffs because it has government and charter contracts.

Jim Petty, president of Air Vegas, said cancellations have been flooding his office since the Sept. 11 hijacking of four commercial airliners on the East Coast. Petty said "tens of thousands" of reservations for flights over the Grand Canyon were scratched with passengers booked into November asking for their money back.

Petty said the volume is on par with normal off-season bookings in December. He said specific passenger counts are proprietary information, but he said business was booming and he ran about 32 flights the day before the attack. Wednesday, he operated about 10. Business is down by 50 percent, he explained, because some of the flights were full and some were ferried nearly empty.

"We're basically going into our slow time three months early, without notice," Petty said.

Norm Freeman, chief executive officer of Scenic Airlines, said his company's air tours also are running at off-season levels.

"It's pretty devastating, to tell you the truth," Freeman said. "About 98 percent of our business has basically stopped traveling. As a result, our (scenic tour) flying has nearly come to a halt."

Freeman and Petty said their companies rely heavily on overseas passengers and that source, for now, has dried up.

Petty said that although Japan Airlines has no plans to cut flights on its nonstop route between Tokyo and Las Vegas, he heard that one of the airline's Boeing 747 jumbo jets arrived this week with only 25 passengers aboard. Japan Airlines does not disclose its passenger loads for competitive reasons.

"Twenty-five people on a 747," Petty said. "That didn't even pay for the rubber on the tires they used."

Petty said he expects numbers to pick up next week, which should help Air Vegas, which has nine 15-passenger Beechcraft C-99 planes, three of which have been parked during the downturn.

"I don't see much of a recovery until the first of the year, but that's based on nothing in particular since we've never been through anything like this before," Petty said. "But I've heard more people are coming next week, and I'll take any light I can find right now."

Freeman said Scenic hasn't had to lay off employees, primarily because of two types of operations that offset the fewer air tours. A third contract is scheduled to begin next month.

He explained that Scenic's five 44-passenger twin-engine F-27 planes based at McCarran International Airport's executive terminal have been kept busy on government and casino contracts.

He said the government contract involves transporting Department of Defense scientists and Navy personnel from Point Mugu, Calif., to St. Nicholas, an island base off the California coast.

The casino contract is a charter arrangement developed by a partnership of Laughlin casinos operating as Air Laughlin to four cities. Scenic provides the planes and crews for the charters, subsidized by the casinos and the planes land at Bullhead City, Ariz., across the Colorado River from Laughlin. Flights shuttle gamblers from San Jose, Burbank and Ontario, Calif., and Phoenix.

Another Scenic contract that begins Oct. 1 is an "essential air service" operation to Ely. The federal government subsidizes air carriers to fly to small communities to assure them some form of air service and Scenic won that contract.

Steve Bassett, president of the U.S. Air Tour Association in Washington, said the commercial air tour industry nationwide could lose more than $20 million this year and that amount "could easily cripple us."

Bassett said the industry is strongest at the Grand Canyon, Hawaii and Alaska and the more than 800,000 people who fly over the Grand Canyon every year produce an economic impact of $500 million for Southern Nevada. Many of those who fly from Southern Nevada also spend some of their money in Arizona.

Bassett and Petty said they are awaiting word from government leaders on what, if anything, the air tour industry would get from a $17.5 billion federal aid package for airlines being debated in Congress.

The aid package, a combination of grants, loans and tax deferments, is designed to keep the slumping commercial airline industry afloat.

Bassett said association officials have met with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta "to make our case."

Petty said he doesn't know if air tour operators would be eligible for aid.

"The up side is that we're prepared to whether the storm," Petty said. "We're not asking for a handout, just a hand."

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