McCarran Airport passenger traffic continues upward ascent

Passenger traffic at McCarran International Airport in October continued its year long steady recovery.

The 3.7 million people who boarded or got off flights during the month marked a 4.5 percent gain from one year ago, almost exactly matching the pace for the year-to-date. The numbers of departing flights and total seats also increased in lockstep.

However, the capacity gains craved by resort operators hoping to fill rooms have followed an unbalanced pattern, largely along the vapor trails of discounter Spirit. The number of seats leaving McCarran each week went up 4.9 percent, to 490,000, but more than three-fourths of the gain was on routes to Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area or Portland, Ore. These were all routes Spirit has entered in the past few months, in some instances sparking rivals to add flights of their own. The Los Angeles route alone accounted for 8,100 more seats.

While hoteliers have generally cheered McCarran's recovery, they express concern that the number of weekly seats is still 90,000 lower than four years ago even though the hotel room inventory has climbed by 17,000.

Other destinations were a mixed bag of generally small numbers.

Not surprisingly, the 268 percent passenger increase by Spirit far outdistanced the rate of any other carrier. During the depths of the recession in January 2009, it had reduced its schedule to just seven weekly flights to Detroit. Now it is up to 147 flights to seven cities and plans to open a crew and maintenance base in Las Vegas early next year.

Market leader Southwest declined slightly in October from one year ago, to 1.4 million passengers, and United declined by 27 percent as it continues to reorient its network following its merger with Continental.

Several other carriers, including Alaska, Allegiant and JetBlue, also posted double-digit gains.

In something of a last hurrah, US Airways rose 10 percent, but it plans to pare its schedule from 36 daily flights to 20.

While the domestic side rose at a moderate pace, international traffic jumped 30 percent in October, with about half of the improvement from north and south of the border. WestJet continued to raise its Las Vegas service aggressively to several cities in Canada, while the arrival of Mexican discounter Volaris earlier this year and a larger AeroMexico schedule brought more passengers.

Both Virgin Atlantic and British Airways went up 25 percent, as Virgin added Manchester as a nonstop destination and British put larger jets on the route.

Contact reporter Tim O'Reiley at toreiley@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290.