Thursday, May 2, 2002 | 11:03 a.m.
The last new flight to be added by Southwest Airlines at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport was a nonstop to Norfolk, Va., added in October.
Expansions at McCarran could now mean more new Southwest flights are on the way, Southwest Chairman Herb Kelleher said.
"We're working with (Clark County Aviation Director) Randy Walker on some infrastructure improvements so we can add some additional flights," Kelleher said Tuesday after delivering a speech at the annual convention of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in Phoenix. "We need that infrastructure before we can add additional flights."
Kelleher wouldn't commit to adding additional flights at McCarran, nor would he say what new destinations would be considered. "But we remain very interested in developing Las Vegas," Kelleher said.
The improvements primarily involve new ticket counters. McCarran will soon convert 12 to 14 former American Airlines ticket counters to Southwest, giving Southwest 40 ticket counters in total. Southwest will also gain additional line space and baggage handling facilities, airport spokeswoman Hilarie Grey said Wednesday.
The remodeling project could begin this spring and be complete sometime this fall, she said.
Southwest now runs 170 flights a day out of McCarran; it has gate space for up to 200 flights. It's the market leader in Las Vegas, making it a crucial component of the city's tourism-based economy.
One possibility for a new nonstop Las Vegas flight could be at Manchester, N.H., located near Boston. The runways at Manchester are now too short to allow a plane to take off with a full load of fuel -- and that prevents a nonstop flight to a Western city such as Las Vegas.
That will change soon, however, as Manchester is extending both runways. That project is set for completion in 2003.
"I'll wait until that's finished" before deciding on a new nonstop between Las Vegas and Manchester, Kelleher said.
Providence, R.I.,'s airport is in a similar situation, and runway expansion has been discussed there as well. But some residents near the Providence airport are opposing this project, making its timetable unclear, Kelleher said.
New ticket counters will allow the addition of such flights -- but in the short term, the more immediate benefit will be reducing wait times for harried McCarran travelers. During peak periods on Sunday and Monday, McCarran officials still suggest travelers come in at least two hours before departure time.
To ease the situation, Southwest has been hiring personnel at McCarran at a time when many airlines were cutting back. Since Sept. 11, Southwest has hired 124 in Las Vegas, giving it nearly 950 Las Vegas employees, said spokeswoman Beth Harbin. The airline is continuing to hire in Las Vegas, she said.
In the longer term, the situation should improve further as the result of improvements in security screening technology, Kelleher said.
"I think things will move much more swiftly as a result of that," Kelleher said. "Within a year or 18 months, that will greatly improve things."
At ticket counters, a big bottleneck is explosive detection. Bags are randomly selected at the ticket counter and run through an explosive detection machine. Each scan takes about three minutes -- and that adds to the check-in time for travelers.
"Technology exists now that will probably be perfected, and it will lessen the time it takes right now," said Rosemary Vassiliadis, deputy director of Clark County Aviation.
Future technology improvements may also result in a combination of X-ray machines and explosive detectors, resulting in quicker security lines, Vassiliadis said.
But it will never completely resolve the wait problem at McCarran at the end of the weekend.
"It can be ameliorated, but people need to bear in mind what it was like even before Sept. 11," Kelleher said. "You can't say those peaks will disappear."
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