Airport traffic falls for second straight month

Passenger counts at McCarran International Airport fell for the second straight month, but international travelers continued to keep the numbers from a deeper decline.

The number of arriving and departing passengers at McCarran was 3,487,552 in March of this year compared with 3,633,269 in March 2009, a decline of 4 percent. The figure followed a 6.2 percent decline in February after a virtually flat January.

Southwest Airlines, traditionally the leader in passenger counts at McCarran, saw traffic drop 1.9 percent in March. Southwest handled 1,368,201 passengers in March compared with 1,394,322 in March 2009.

For the year, Southwest traffic is up 0.2 percent.

March also reflected the nearly 50 percent reduction in flights to and from McCarran by US Airways. Passenger counts were down 54.1 percent for the Tempe, Ariz.-based air carrier. United, the airport's No. 2 air carrier, saw its passenger counts fall 1.8 percent in March.

Both Delta and American Airlines reported nearly 3 percent increases in passenger counts in March.

Total travel out of McCarran's international terminal during March rose 2.1 percent compared with the same month last year and was up 17.1 percent when compared with February.

For the year, international travel through the terminal is up 3.6 percent.

Still, some Wall Street analysts believe McCarran needs to see its number of domestic flights increase to help offset the number of hotel rooms that were added to Las Vegas at the end of last year, including almost 6,000 hotel rooms at MGM Mirage's $8.5 billion CityCenter development.

Janney Montgomery Scott gaming analyst Brian McGill said the reduced number of airline passengers could make it difficult for hotel operators to achieve an increase in revenues per available hotel room, a nontraditional accounting measure Wall Street uses to judge profitability.

"The lack of airline capacity into Las Vegas remains a concern and in our opinion will cause hotel occupancy to continue to run well below normal levels going forward," McGill said. "The drive-in customer will have to be more of a focus and they are just not as profitable as fly-in customers."

Contact reporter Howard Stutz at hstutz@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3871.