Reid airport’s busiest airline sees big bump in passengers

Southwest Airlines, the busiest commercial air carrier at Harry Reid International Airport, reported an all-time record for quarterly revenue Thursday.

The record comes at the same time Reid International officials reported Southwest having the highest number of monthly passengers locally in at least 6½ years.

Southwest surpassed $7 billion in revenue for the first time, with more than $6.4 billion generated through passenger ticket purchases during the company’s second quarter, which ended June 30.

Southwest would not confirm the record numbers in Las Vegas, saying the U.S. Department of Transportation forbids the company from disclosing those statistics in advance of them being posted by the department.

“Our schedule is at its historical peak, and that’s translated into many of our cities,” a spokesman for the company said. “Load factors are high, but we don’t have the specific numbers to offer.”

Reid International on Wednesday reported Southwest carried 1.8 million passengers to and from Las Vegas in the month of June, a 10.5 percent increase over June 2022 and a 3.1 percent increase from May. Reid officials said in their research they found no higher passenger volume since 2017.

The number of passengers transported by Southwest represents 37.2 percent of all passenger traffic at Reid in June.

“We operated a record number of flights and carried a record number of customers and bags, all while achieving a completion factor of more than 99 percent — our highest second quarter performance in the past 10 years,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in an earnings call with investors Thursday morning.

“Based on current revenue and cost trends, we expect record operating revenue and a profitable outlook again for third quarter 2023 and continue to expect year-over-year margin expansion for full year 2023,” he said.

Jordan said the record performance was the result of strong leisure demand across the system.

Las Vegas is one of Southwest’s largest stations, using 21 Reid gates. The Dallas-based airline provides 274 departures a day to 67 cities and has 4,623 employees based in Las Vegas.

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