Vegas air traffic up from last year, down from 2000

Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2002 | 11:11 a.m.

McCarran International Airport's September passenger count was up dramatically from last year -- no big surprise since airports were closed after last year's terrorist attacks -- but traffic is down from the same month in 2000.

The airport serving Las Vegas reported 2.8 million passengers in September, compared with 2.1 million (up 33 percent) in September 2001 and 3 million (down 4.5 percent) in September 2000.

Year-to-date totals for the first three quarters of 2002 were 26.5 million passengers, down 3.1 percent from the 27.3 million for nine months in 2001 and off 3.6 percent from 27.5 million for nine months in 2000.

The top five airlines serving McCarran served more passengers in September than they did in the same month in 2001, but only No. 1 Southwest and No. 4 National had higher counts last month than they did in September 2000. From September 2000 to September 2002, Southwest was up 4.2 percent to 838,847 passengers and National was up 13.5 percent to 208,839 passengers.

During the same period, America West was down 5.4 percent to 450,322 passengers, United was off 22.1 percent to 208,949 passengers and Delta was down 27 percent to 182,128 passengers.