Las Vegas’ McCarran airport continues record pace for passengers

Passenger volume at Las Vegas’ airport increased again in September, marking 12 straight months of year-over-year monthly increases.

September saw 4.3 million travelers — arriving and departing — pass through McCarran International Airport, representing a 6.8 percent jump over September 2018’s 4.05 million passengers, the Clark County Department of Aviation announced Wednesday.

The September results also marked the seventh time this year McCarran surpassed 4 million monthly passengers.

Through the first nine months of 2019, McCarran has seen 38.5 million passengers, a 3.4 percent jump over the same period last year when 37.2 million passengers went through the airport. The airport remains on pace to surpass 50 million passengers, which would top last year’s record mark of 49.7 million.

Southwest Airlines, McCarran’s largest carrier, saw another slight decline in September, dipping 1.9 percent from a year ago. Southwest is down 2.3 percent year to date.

Southwest’s down year can be attributed to the ongoing grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX jet, according to Southwest spokesman Dan Landson. The MAX jets were grounded worldwide in March following a pair of deadly crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in November and March, respectively, killing 346 people.

Southwest has removed the MAX from its flight schedule through Feb. 8.

The changes have been implemented, and any affected customers have been notified and accommodated on other flights, Landson said.

There should be no additional impact to Southwest’s schedule or customers during the holidays, Landson said.

Frontier Airlines saw a 65 percent increase over September 2018, going from 190,467 passengers to 314,629 this year.

The increase is largely attributed to the airline’s new daily service from McCarran to Los Angeles, Miami and Phoenix that launched last month, according to Frontier spokesman Zach Kramer.

With new routes to Reno, Seattle, Portland and Orange County, California, beginning in November, it’s likely another sizable increase in passenger volume will occur in November’s report, Kramer said.

Spirit Airlines continued its strong 2019, seeing 466,283 passengers in September, a 19.5 percent year-over-year jump. For the year Spirit is up 25 percent to 3.9 million passengers, making it McCarran’s third busiest airline. At the current passenger growth rate, Spirit is on pace to surpass Delta as Las Vegas’ second busiest carrier in the coming months.

JetBlue saw the largest passenger drop among the largest domestic carriers with an 8.5 percent dip last month, going from 99,483 passengers in September 2018 to 90,992 passengers the same month this year.

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.