April Passenger Count Increases at McCarran

Passenger traffic at McCarran International continued to climb in April when the Las Vegas airport hosted more than 3.7 million arriving and departing passengers, up 3.8 percent from a year ago.

Year-to-date, local air traffic topped the 14 million mark in just four months and was 6.1 percent ahead of last year's record-setting pace.

The airport has topped the 3 million passenger each month since January 2004, when it just missed that threshold with 2.98 million passengers.

With local travel demand rising due to new hotel rooms at Wynn Las Vegas and Bellagio, among other sites, and the April 15 addition of 10 gates at the D concourse, McCarran could soon top the 4 million monthly passenger mark.

As usual, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines was the month's busiest carrier with 1.13 million passengers, up 1.7 percent from a year ago.

But second-ranked America West saw significant 13.5 percent growth in the month to 649,325 passengers.

America West in April added Las Vegas service to Pittsburgh; Bakersfield, Calif., and Long Beach, Calif.

Chicago-based United Airlines saw its local traffic dip by nearly 5 percent in April to 268,309 passengers, which was still good enough for third-place last month.

The month's Top Five was rounded out by Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines (247,525 passengers, up 9.1 percent) and Forth Worth, Texas-based American Airlines (216,628, down 0.6 percent).

Other notable performers included Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air, whose 63,731 April passenger count was up more than 62 percent from a year ago thanks to new local service to Missoula, Mont., and Midamerica St. Louis Airport; as well as Sun Country, a Mendota Heights, Minn.-based charter specialist whose nearly 87,000 April passenger total was more than 40 percent better than a year ago.