The inaugural flight of Korean Air arrives at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas with more than 300 passengers on Friday. Photos by Jane Kalinowsky. A Las Vegas-style welcome party at Terminal 2, including "Elvis" and a showgirl, greets passengers arriving Friday on Korean Air's first flight into McCarran International Airport. Local officials said Korean Air's service will mitigate the loss of weekly flights from Japan Airlines. JAL is cutting the flights to save money.

The Far East drew a little closer Friday as Korean Air launched its flight service into Las Vegas.

Korean Air's first flight into the market landed at McCarran International Airport, where its Las Vegas-style welcome party at Terminal 2 included "Elvis" and a showgirl.

The airline is sending three flights a week nonstop from Incheon International Airport in Seoul, South Korea, to McCarran. With the addition of flights to Las Vegas, Korean Air serves 13 U.S. gateways, making it the largest carrier from Asia into North America in the number of airports served directly. Globally, the 118-plane airline operates nearly 400 passenger flights a day to 91 cities in 31 countries.

The flights will boost the efforts of tourism officials to expand Las Vegas' share of visitors from Asia.

Korean Air offers connections to Seoul from 15 Japanese cities and 21 cities in China; new policies liberalizing air access between South Korea and China could soon raise that market total to 30 Chinese cities. Connections to and from Singapore; Bangkok, Thailand; and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, are also part of the airline's service.

Korean Air's interest in the Las Vegas market extends beyond the city's borders. John Jackson, Korean Air's director of passenger marketing and sales, said the airline views McCarran as a hub from which it will provide connections to regional inland cities including Phoenix, Denver and Salt Lake City.

Wooing Korean Air into Las Vegas was a joint effort between officials of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and McCarran.

"Korean Air has a pretty good network established in Incheon, and we felt that would allow people from all over the region to feed in and have direct service to Las Vegas," said Randall Walker, director of the Clark County Department of Aviation, which oversees McCarran.

Terry Jicinsky, senior vice president of marketing for the convention authority, said landing Korean Air service was part of a strategy to raise the city's foreign visitation from 12 percent today to at least 15 percent by 2010. Developing access to and from feeder markets in Asia, he said, is vital to fulfilling that visitor-volume goal.

The authority's data show Korean Air should have no shortage of customers.

In 2005, South Korea ranked No. 5 among Las Vegas' top feeder countries for overseas tourists, with 112,000 visitors from that nation. That visitor volume marked a 64.7 percent jump when compared with the 68,000 South Koreans who came to Las Vegas in 2004.

Travel officials said Korean Air's new service should propel that tourist base even more.

"We know from past experience that whenever there is direct air service from an individual country, we see significant increases in the number of visitors who come to our city," Jicinsky said.

Korean Air's service comes at an opportune time. On Friday, Japan Airlines will discontinue its three weekly nonstop flights from Tokyo's Narita International Airport to McCarran. The move is a cost-saving measure for the airline, which is struggling with high fuel prices and stiff competition in domestic markets in Japan. It lost $277.3 million in the quarter ended June 30, on top of a $278.1 million loss in the same quarter of 2005.

Japan sent 190,000 tourists to Las Vegas in 2005, good enough for second place behind the United Kingdom, which posted 439,000 local visitors.

Local officials said Korean Air's service will mitigate the loss of Japan Airlines' local flights, and should help sustain visitor volume from the Land of the Rising Sun.

"People in that region will have a similar opportunity (to fly to Las Vegas)," Walker said. "It won't be as convenient as it would be flying straight from Japan, but with all those feeder markets in Japan, Incheon is a very good alternative to Narita."

Japan Airlines' withdrawal from the market is not the first time service from Asia to Las Vegas has hit bumpy skies.

Japan Airlines temporarily slashed its number of Las Vegas-bound flights after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, led to a big drop in air travel. The airline also briefly cut some service into McCarran in 2003 after the Iraq War, terrorism worries and an epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Asia drove down ticket sales.

And poor reservation numbers, which Walker said were due partly to ineffective marketing, forced Singapore Airlines to cancel its flights from Hong Kong into McCarran in 2003 after less than a year of service.

Helane Becker, a transportation analyst with The Benchmark Co. in New York, said simple economics have added to the woes of airlines trying to make a go of trips into McCarran.

Though Las Vegas is a popular destination among Asians, she said, planes landing at McCarran have a lower profit per passenger than other airports. Because Las Vegas is a leisure market, people book their trips into the market months in advance and thus earn steep discounts, Becker said. That translates into lower profits per seat.

When jet-fuel prices are low -- perhaps $1 or $1.50 a gallon -- flying the older, less fuel-efficient 747s many international airlines send to overseas destinations make financial sense, Becker said. But with fuel costs today parked above $2 per gallon, flying a fuel guzzler into a low-profit market such as Las Vegas isn't feasible. Most airlines will instead direct their traffic toward San Francisco, Seattle or Los Angeles, and partner with other airlines to provide connections to inland airports.

However, Jackson said he believes service into Las Vegas can pay healthy dividends for Korean Air in the long run.

Its 301-seat Boeing 777-200s are known for their fuel economy, especially when compared with heavier 747s.

In addition, Jackson said Korean Air's domestic hub strategy differs from predecessors Japan Airlines and Singapore Airlines, who both viewed Las Vegas as a destination market. Deploying McCarran as a regional hub will help Korean Air fill more seats on its domestic flights.

And Jackson said Korean Air's flights into Las Vegas are posting solid profits per seat.

"We're already seeing significant business in the premium classes," where tickets can cost about $4,000 each, he said. Economy-class tickets cost around $1,000.

Before it debuted its regular service, Korean Air chartered about half a dozen flights from Seoul into Las Vegas annually to shuttle businesspeople into the city for conventions and trade shows, he said.

Unlike many of its counterparts, Korean Air has managed to thrive amidst the turmoil that has shaken the airline industry since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Trade magazine Air Transport World gave Korean Air its Phoenix Award in January for the airline's successes in facing down the challenges -- from fuel prices to epidemic illnesses to terrorism -- that have beset the global airline industry in the last half-decade.

The magazine credited Korean Air for its "major transformation" in recent years, and said the airline's goal of becoming one of the world's 10 best airlines by 2010 "is highly credible."

The company reported a net profit in 2005 of about $215 million, on revenue of more than $8 billion. Its 2005 operating profit was up 12.6 percent over 2004 results, to nearly $460 million.

The good fiscal times have allowed Korean Air to upgrade its offerings. The company is spending $10 billion through 2007 to overhaul its in-flight services.

To get travelers interested in its makeover, Korean Air is rolling out its first stateside advertising campaign in a decade. Ads have already appeared in the Review-Journal, and in the next 10 weeks, spots will appear in national newspapers and major business and consumer publications. Jackson said the campaign will cost "in the millions."