Las Vegas airport saw third-highest monthly total ever for passengers

Harry Reid International Airport had the third-highest number of monthly passengers in its history in July, the Clark County Department of Aviation reported Monday.

Airport officials said 4.946 million people arrived and departed from Las Vegas’ airport, a 1.7 percent increase over July 2022.

It was the third-highest number of monthly passengers behind October 2022’s 5.186 million and May 2023’s 4.953 million.

July’s figures bring the year-to-date total to 33.096 million passengers, 13.5 percent ahead of the first seven months of 2022.

The high number of passengers in July puts Southern Nevada well on track to eclipse 2022’s record 52.7 million travelers.

The steady rise in the number of passengers served at Reid has put airport executives on notice that they need to dust off plans to build a reliever airport south of Las Vegas in the Ivanpah Valley.

Clark County Department of Aviation Director Rosemary Vassiliadis affirmed in an interview in February that growth at Reid is on a trajectory to reach its capacity of between 63 million and 65 million annual passengers by around 2030.

The earliest a new reliever airport, south of Las Vegas between Jean and Primm, could be operational is 2037, she said.

International traffic to Reid continued to rebound in July with 290,546 passengers — a 13.5 percent increase — arriving for the month. That brings the seven-month total to 1.8 million passengers, 41.4 percent ahead of last year’s pace.

Domestic traffic continued to grow, with 4.6 million passengers, a 1.1 percent increase over last year.

Airlines add more seats coming to Vegas

The reason passenger counts continue to grow is because the number of seats coming into the Las Vegas market continues to climb. Market leader Southwest Airlines has more seats coming into Reid than ever before and the airline is filling those seats – there were 1.9 million passengers that flew Southwest in July, a 10.3 percent increase from last year.

Delta Air Lines also had an increase of 7.4 percent to 436,910 passengers, but the rest of the top five domestic carriers to Las Vegas showed declines for the month, with Spirit off 6 percent to 642,512, American down 7.9 percent to 360,157, and Frontier off 18.9 percent to 359,196.

On the international side, Canadian discounter WestJet led all foreign carriers with 76,365 passengers, a 44.5 percent increase over last year, followed by Air Canada, 46,516 passengers, up 8.5 percent, and Volaris, a Mexican discount carrier, at 26,816, up 21.5 percent.

Reid International’s west-side terminals, which include helicopter air tour traffic, fell 4.5 percent to 86,405 passengers in July. Over seven months, west-side terminal traffic is flat, up 0.7 percent, to 562,158 passengers over last year.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.