Sun Coverage
As seasons change, so do airline flight schedules, and in recent years, Las Vegas has received bad news when summer vacation time ended.
But not this year.
Southwest Airlines, WestJet and Allegiant Air made a flurry of announcements last week for new service to and from McCarran International Airport.
Southwest made its long-expected nonstop service plan for Atlanta flights official, WestJet announced seasonal snowbird flights to and from eight Canadian cities, and Allegiant announced service to two Midwest college towns. The only bad news Las Vegas got was confirmation from US Airways that it plans to cut its McCarran schedule by 40 percent.
Southwest’s Atlanta plans had been the object of speculation ever since the airline in May closed its $1 billion deal to acquire AirTran, the second-largest operator at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. As recently as last August, Southwest officials said they had no timetable for starting nonstop service to and from Atlanta.
Beginning March 10, Southwest will offer a daily nonstop flight between Las Vegas and Atlanta leaving McCarran at 6 p.m., and a return flight leaving Atlanta at 7:35 a.m. The airline also will have seven one-stop flights from Las Vegas to Atlanta and nine one-stop trips to Las Vegas from there.
Southwest will use 137-passenger Boeing 737 twin-engine jets on the route to Hartsfield-Jackson, the nation’s busiest airport. To and from Las Vegas, Southwest will compete on the route with Delta Air Lines, whose headquarters is in Atlanta and which has eight daily round trips to and from McCarran. In addition, AirTran will continue to operate four daily round trips between the two cities.
WestJet’s seasonal expansion will take the Canadian discount carrier to the highest number of seats in the market since it began flying here in 2008.
WestJet, the busiest international carrier at McCarran, will bring an additional 1,760 seats per week to the market on flights from eight cities. That’s 18 percent more than 2010.
WestJet, which brought 873,801 passengers here in the 12-month period that ended July 31, uses three models of twin-engine Boeing 737 jets with capacities between 119 and 166 passengers.
Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air detailed plans for new nonstop service to Lexington, Ky., home of the University of Kentucky, and Knoxville, Tenn., the location of the University of Tennessee.
Both routes will operate twice a week beginning in November and use recently acquired 217-seat Boeing 757 twin-engine jets.
The Lexington service begins November 16 with Wednesday and Saturday operations. Flights will leave McCarran on those days at 8 a.m., arriving at Blue Grass Airport at 2:30 p.m. The return flight leaves Lexington at 3:45 p.m., arriving in Vegas at 5:30 p.m.
The Knoxville service begins Nov. 18 with Monday and Friday operations. Flights will leave McCarran on those days at 6:05 a.m., arriving at McGhee Tyson Airport at 12:40 p.m. The return flight leaves Knoxville at 1:55 p.m., arriving in Las Vegas at 3:15 p.m.
Allegiant is flying its reconditioned 757 jets on domestic routes in advance of launching service between the West Coast and Hawaii next year.
Last month, Allegiant announced flights between Las Vegas and Lafayette, La., as well as routes to several cities from Mesa, Ariz., Palm Springs, Calif., and the airline’s Florida destinations.
But not all of last week’s news was good for Las Vegas.
US Airways, once the busiest air carrier at McCarran when it operated as America West Airlines, will cut 40 percent of its Las Vegas flights by early next year, reducing it to one of the smaller players in the market.
The Tempe, AZ-based airline, the nation’s sixth largest by traffic, announced it would cut its daily departures here from 35 to 21.
It is eliminating point-to-point service from Las Vegas to Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles International, San Francisco and Fresno, Calif., a service subcontracted to Mesa Airlines operating as US Airways Express.
Most of the cuts will be completed by late November, with the last changes occurring by January.
All that will remain on US Airways’ Las Vegas schedule will be five daily nonstop round trips each to Charlotte, N.C., and Philadelphia, one daily nonstop round trip to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and 72 flights a week to and from Phoenix, all hub and high-emphasis cities in the airline’s network.
The airline will cut three daily operations each to Dallas-Fort Worth International and Los Angeles International, one daily to and from Boston’s Logan International Airport, 13 flights a week to and from San Francisco International and six operations a week to and from Fresno on US Airways Express.
The cuts are part of US Airways’ strategy to operate nearly all of its flights to and from hub airports in an effort to increase profitability.
US Airways spokesman Andrew Christie said 72 full- and part-time customer service and fleet service jobs would be lost at the airline’s McCarran station, but all employees would be offered positions at other US Airways stations.
America West Airlines was the dominant carrier at McCarran in the late 1980s and early ’90s and once operated a “night hub” at McCarran, connecting passengers on the airline’s network through Las Vegas mostly after 10 p.m.
When America West acquired US Airways in 2005 and adopted its name, it closed the night hub because of the rising cost of fuel, but operated a schedule of about 131 daily Las Vegas flights. As CEO Doug Parker considered strategies to stay profitable, the decision was reached to de-emphasize Las Vegas operations as it had done in Pittsburgh immediately after the acquisition.
At the end of 2008 and early 2009, the airline cut nearly 100 flights in Las Vegas and hundreds of employees were transferred or lost their jobs.