Friday, April 3, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Sun Archives
- McCarran passenger volume falls 15 percent (3-19-2009)
- Airport number down 11th straight month (3-6-2009)
- McCarran passenger volume declines again (2-25-2009)
- Southwest to begin flights to Boston (2-19-2009)
- US Airways to cut flights out of McCarran (2-19-2009)
- McCarran traffic drops nearly 8 percent last year (1-23-2009)
McCarran International Airport has now gone a full year with monthly declines in passenger traffic after the Clark County Aviation Department reported a 15.2 percent decrease in travelers in February over the previous year.
The airport reported 3 million passengers for the month, a decline slightly less than January’s 15.7 percent drop, which was the worst falloff since after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Most airlines declined with market leader Southwest Airlines off 9.3 percent and No. 2 US Airways down 34.5 percent from February 2008.
Only six of the 32 active carriers at McCarran showed increases, primarily because of greater capacity. They include Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air, up 3.5 percent to 135,642 passengers; Canada-based WestJet, up 40.6 percent to 67,291; Virgin America, up 68.9 percent to 35,990; Hawaiian, up 3.9 percent to 29,572; Aeromexico, up 93.7 percent to 4,258; and Delta Air Lines commuter partner SkyWest, up 71 percent to 6,651.
In addition, two other commuter airlines — Alaska Airlines-affiliated Horizon Air and Delta partner Mesaba — started operating at McCarran in the past year. Two carriers that were operating at McCarran in February 2008 are no longer flying, bankrupted ATA and Aloha.
Among the top carriers, Southwest had 1.2 million passengers and US Airways had 394,477 for the month. No. 3 United was off 9 percent to 207,107, No. 4 Delta fell 14.5 percent to 172,517 and American was down 2 percent to 160,793. Delta’s figures do not account for passengers flown by its merger partner, Northwest Airlines.
For 2009’s first two months, traffic was off 15.4 percent with 6 million passengers.
McCarran’s capacity increased with 4.4 percent more flights and 4.6 percent more seats from February to March. But the number of flights is still off 11.5 percent and the number of seats off 9.8 percent from March 2008 with an average of 501 flights a day.
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