Charter flight weakness hurt McCarran traffic in March

Monday, April 21, 2003 | 11:10 a.m.

March passenger traffic at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport was down 2.3 percent from the same month a year ago, but most of the downturn was in charter flights, not commercial airline traffic.

A report issued by McCarran officials on Friday said traffic fell to 3.13 million passengers from 3.2 million a year ago. Commercial airline traffic was down 0.7 percent, with the biggest decrease resulting from the closure of National Airlines, which carried 209,338 passengers in March 2002.

The Las Vegas-based airline closed in November. Most of the airlines reported year-over-year increases in March, including No. 1 Southwest (up 2.2 percent to 996,635 passengers), No. 2 America West Airlines (up 8.1 percent to 518,406 passengers) and No. 3 United (up 8.6 percent to 242,984).

The largest segment showing a downturn was in charter flights, which was down 29.4 percent to 179,113 passengers from March 2002 to last month.

While some of the downturn is attributable to war jitters, McCarran spokeswoman Hilarie Grey said part of it can be pinned to companies making internal adjustments within their operations.

Hawaiian Airlines, for example, no longer flies charters, and only a percentage of those customers chartered on Hawaiian by Boyd Gaming Group were picked up by Omni Air.

Grey also said some of the Grand Canyon air tour flights that had been flown from McCarran a year ago have been shifted to North Las Vegas Airport.