McCarran passenger traffic on record pace

Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2004 | 10:38 a.m.

McCarran International Airport had near-record traffic counts last month, posting the best August in the airport's history.

Airport officials said Tuesday that 3.64 million passengers used the city's airport in August, slightly below the 3.7 million flown in July, the best month ever.

The August total was 12.2 percent ahead of the 3.2 million people that flew into and out of McCarran a year earlier. In August 2001 -- the month before terrorists commandeered and crashed four aircraft in the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history -- McCarran recorded 3.379 million passengers.

For 2004, the airport is 14.7 percent ahead of the 2003 totals for the first eight months of the year with 27.7 million passengers, compared with 24.2 million a year ago.

Not every airline serving McCarran shared in big increases, with Delta Air Lines -- the No. 4 commercial air carrier at the airport -- showing a fractional decline for August compared with a year ago.

Atlanta-based Delta increased the number of seats coming into the market by 7.4 percent since August 2003, but the airline, which has reported it is on the verge of bankruptcy, had a 0.3 percent decline in traffic, from 236,687 passengers in August 2003 to 236,037 this year.

But most of the airport's other carriers had double-digit increases.

Market leader Southwest Airlines had a 12.6 percent increase in the number of passengers served, jumping from 1 million to 1.17 million people.

No. 3 United Airlines, which is operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and this year changed its operational focus in Las Vegas to the predominantly low-fare Ted Airlines subsidiary, saw a 20 percent increase, from 227,998 passengers in August 2003 to 273,635 people this year.

No. 5 American Airlines was up 10.6 percent to 220,036 passengers this year.

Meanwhile, No. 2 America West Airlines, which uses McCarran as one of its hub airports, had only 0.1 percent growth, to 596,141 passengers.

In the month of August, the top four airlines serving McCarran increased the number of seats they had coming into the market by double-digit percentages compared with the number they had in August 2003.

Southwest had 13.8 percent more seats and 12.8 percent more daily flights arriving and departing from Las Vegas, America West had 12.9 percent more seats and 10.9 percent more daily departures, United had 16 percent more seats and 2.7 percent more daily departures and American had 16.5 percent more seats and 4.7 percent more daily departures than they had a year earlier.