Icahn firm cuts 460 positions in Las Vegas

Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2001 | 11:13 a.m.

Lowestfare.com, billionaire entrepreneur Carl Icahn's Internet travel company, has laid off 460 Las Vegas employees.

The company, which enables customers to book plane and hotel reservations, cruises and tours at its Internet address of www.lowestfare.com, opened in Las Vegas as a reservation call center six years ago and branched into Internet sales.

A spokeswoman for New York-based Lowestfare said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks resulted in the decision to cut the company's Las Vegas work force in half.

Spokeswoman Carol Snyder said the office would stay open but scale back operations. The Lowestfare.com Internet site was up this morning and there was no indication of any change in operations.

Las Vegas is home to Lowestfare's largest office, with centers in Kent, Wash., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., folding some of their operations into Las Vegas earlier this year. Snyder said job cuts also were made in those offices.

Icahn also owns the two Arizona Charlie's properties in Las Vegas as well as the recently expanded and remodeled Stratosphere hotel-casino.

"We feel industry trends have made noncontracted airline ticketing operations untenable and prefer to enhance the business models we believe will rebound," said Lowestfare.com Chief Executive Officer Gail Golden.

While Lowestfare blamed the layoffs on the terrorist attacks, an analyst who covers the Internet travel industry said trouble was brewing for the company as early as last year.

Henry Harteveldt, an analyst with Forrester Research, said Lowestfare began facing difficulty when TWA -- an airline Icahn owned in the 1980s -- faced financial trouble last year and ultimately was acquired by American Airlines.

As part of his settlement with TWA when he left the company, Icahn retained access to discounted tickets on TWA flights, which he sold on Lowestfare.com. When American acquired TWA, the deal with Icahn ended.