Richard N. Velotta
VEGAS INC Coverage
You’ll never get an argument from me that Southwest Airlines is a fine company and a terrific airline.
Southwest was one of the airlines that made it possible for everybody to fly, not just the jet-setting rich and famous. It was a champion of the so-called democratization of air travel.
As the busiest commercial air carrier at McCarran International Airport, Southwest has been a leading conduit for tourists coming to Las Vegas, and every Southern Nevadan should be thankful for the partnership between the airline and the local tourism industry.
That said, Southwest should be ashamed at how it has priced its flights between Las Vegas and Reno.
Today, the base price for a one-way ticket from Las Vegas to Reno is $91. Make it a round trip and throw in the taxes and the ticket price is $203. And, yes, on Southwest, bags fly free.
But consider a flight between Las Vegas and Los Angeles International Airport, a trip of roughly the same distance. On that, the base price is $49 and a round trip with taxes costs $119.
Why such a disparity? The reality is that Southwest charges more to fly to Reno because it can. It has no competition on the route. The Las Vegas-to-Los Angeles route, meanwhile, is served by American, Delta, US Airways (for now), United, SkyWest and Spirit. You can add JetBlue to the list if you don’t mind flying into the Long Beach airport instead of LAX.
US Airways once served Reno from Las Vegas. Longtime Las Vegans probably remember good old Reno Air, eventually acquired by American Airlines, which gobbled up its aircraft and eventually abandoned the route.
When there was competition, Southwest made every effort to win and keep its customers. After Reno Air went away and US Airways got rid of nonstop flights and began serving Reno with a flight to Phoenix, a change of planes and a flight from Phoenix to Reno, Southwest gradually increased fares.
Today, Delta offers trips to Reno with a change of planes in Salt Lake City, and United/Continental will do it with a change in San Francisco. The price is about the same as Southwest’s. But who wants to turn what should be a 75-minute flight into a four-hour ordeal?
The answer, it seems, is to recruit an airline to compete with Southwest on the route. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many likely candidates out there that would be able to do that.
The so-called legacy air carriers are tied to their hub airports. That’s why US Airways could serve the route via Phoenix, Delta through Salt Lake City and United/Continental through San Francisco. Some airlines occasionally take chances on point-to-point routes that don’t use their hubs, but the Las Vegas-Reno market isn’t a likely candidate with Southwest offering 11 round trips a day between the two cities.
Two other airlines come to mind.
Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air has the right-sized aircraft, a fleet of MD-80 jets that carry 150 passengers (the airline is upgrading capacity on its fleet so that each plane can carry 166). Another is Florida-based Spirit Airlines, which flies Airbus A319 and A320 jets.
I wouldn’t think Allegiant is a likely candidate, because its business model is different from most traditional air carriers. Allegiant offers low-frequency schedules between resort destinations and small cities across the country. Adding high-frequency trips between Las Vegas and Reno isn’t something Allegiant is structured to do.
Spirit is an interesting possibility. That airline is strong on routes connecting South Florida with the Caribbean, but it recently had a major expansion to Las Vegas and now offers four round trips a day to Los Angeles and Chicago, three a day to Detroit, San Diego and Oakland and two a day to Dallas and Portland, Ore.
Clearly, Spirit has no fear of competing head to head with Southwest, because it does so on the Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland and Portland routes.
Airlines are notoriously shy about sharing which markets they plan to enter, so it’s hard to tell if Reno is on Spirit’s radar.
There’s one other possibility — building a high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and Reno.
But as one of our pundit readers suggested, it would be just our luck that the line would be built to Yerington and riders would then have to drive to Reno.