Airport indicators show economy’s soft

Leila Navidi

Limo driver Jimmy Gibson waits for his customer at McCarran International Airport, where traffic this year through the end of September was down 5.7 percent compared with a year ago. Gibson says has to work 12 hours a day instead of eight because tips are way down.

By Brian Eckhouse (contact)

Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Leila Navidi

Sales clerk Crys Bradley reads during a slow period at Mr. Boxer at McCarran. Declining traffic is hurting many airport businesses.

Walking through McCarran International Airport, you can’t shake a sense that it’s a little quieter these days. That’s true even on Fridays, when during healthy times inbound traffic is famously heavy.

If you want to peer through one of McCarran’s many windows into the economy, just spend some time at Havana Honeys, a cigar shop near the front of the second-floor esplanade.

It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and there’s only one customer at the kiosk. There aren’t many passersby. Employee Paul Sutherland, who sells cigars on commission, isn’t just lamenting the shop’s declining business, he is quitting. Cigars are discretionary purchases and people these days are finding better ways to spend their money than on expensive stogies, he says.

Business has gotten thin, too, for limousine driver Jimmy Gibson of Bell Transportation. During the summer, he worked eight-hour days. Now, he’s got to work nearly 12 and he’s still hurting.

“Tips are down 75 percent,” Gibson says, leaning against the carousel at baggage claim 2 as he awaits an arriving passenger. “Talk to any driver; they all notice it.”

Before the slump, Thursdays and Fridays used to be especially busy for Gibson. But these days, Thursdays are feeling like Wednesdays. Gibson thinks visitors are shaving a day off their vacations.

Leonard Miller, who works for Prospect Airport Services, makes his money at the airport by pushing people around in their wheelchairs. There are fewer people needing Miller’s help, so his tips — which he depends on to complement his minimum-wage paycheck — are down.

“But it’s not a ghost town yet,” he says.

Indeed, McCarran remains one of the nation’s busiest airports — just without the maddening congestion tourists had grown accustomed to.

Thirteen percent fewer fliers used McCarran in September versus the same month in 2007. The percentage of passengers has dropped every month since last November except for February, and through the end of September, traffic is down 5.7 percent compared with the previous year.

“We now joke that we’re probably handling the number of passengers our facility was designed for,” says Randall Walker, the airport’s director of aviation. “We’re still going to have 45 million passengers this year. That’s a big airport, especially for a community of 2 million.”

The letup is noticeable in the air, too.

A Southwest Airlines pilot bemoaned that one of the 10 daily direct flights from Denver to Vegas would be cut because of low demand. One of those flights a few days ago had only 43 passengers. And a second one had just a dozen. A dozen.

Las Vegans who haven’t recently visited the airport might be surprised by its quiet. Teresa Ninman, for instance, warned her friend LaNor Maltby to expect chaos at the baggage claim when she flew in from Wisconsin.

After she landed, Maltby called Ninman with the news: Don’t worry about me. “It’s pretty much empty here.”