Korean Air puts hold on flights to Vegas

By Richard N. Velotta (contact)

Friday, Sept. 26, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Korean Air has suspended Las Vegas’ only nonstop link to Asia.

The airline said it was taking a seasonal hiatus by halting its three flights a week to and from Seoul.

“We’re planning to come back in the middle of December,” said John Jackson, Korean Air’s Los Angeles-based marketing director. “It’s the end of the summer, so students have stopped traveling. Business travel to Las Vegas picks up at around the time of the Consumer Electronics Show, so we’ll be back by then.”

Through August, Korean Air had flown 43,113 passengers this year between Seoul and Las Vegas, 5.7 percent less than in the first eight months of 2007. Except for June and August, passenger counts on the route have steadily declined since January.

“It’s another example of the downturn of the economy and of the difficult times the airline industry is experiencing,” said Terry Jicinsky, senior vice president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

But Jicinsky, who said he is confident Korean Air will resume its Las Vegas service, downplayed the effect on tourism.

“While Korean is very important to us, its capacity only represents about 3.7 percent of the international seats coming into the market, so we don’t want to overemphasize this,” Jicinsky said.

Korean Air is trimming other U.S. routes as well, with fewer flights to Dallas, San Francisco and Honolulu, Jackson said. The airline will use smaller jets on flights to New York.

Because of visitor patterns and personnel needs, it was more advantageous for the airline to suspend the Las Vegas service than reduce its flights here, Jackson said.

International carriers have bucked recent trends at McCarran International Airport. Led by Canada’s Westjet Airlines and Mexico’s Aviacsa, they have brought 6.9 percent more passengers from abroad so far this year than last. Domestic flights to McCarran are down 4.2 percent in the same period.

Other airlines — most notably Germany’s Condor Flugdienst — make seasonal adjustments to their flights to Las Vegas to take advantage of peak seasons, cutting flights during slow periods.

“Route adjustments are made all the time, domestically and internationally. It all depends where an aircraft is needed at a certain time,” said Elaine Sanchez, public affairs and marketing manager at McCarran. “... All we can do as an airport is keep an open line of communication.”

Las Vegas became Korean Air’s 13th North American gateway in September 2006, when the airline began flying Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays to and from Seoul using 301-seat Boeing 777-200 jets.

Jicinsky said he expects the airline’s Las Vegas route will flourish once a visa waiver program is amended to allow more Korean tourists to travel to the United States. The Travel Industry Association, a federal lobbying group that works with the visitors authority, is in talks with the U.S. Commerce and Homeland Security departments to expedite the changes.