Las Vegas airport passenger count rises significantly last month

Following the reopening of Nevada casinos on June 4, Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport' passenger count showed a significant improvement compared to May numbers, with 1,041,823 passengers, in accordance with data released by the airport Tuesday.

However, numbers still show a 76.6% drop from June 2019, when the airport served more than 4.4 million travelers.

Overall, nearly 11.7 million passengers passed through McCarran during the first half of 2020, compared to 25.2 million through the first half of 2019, the Reno Gazette-Journal reports.

Nevada's casinos reopened June 4 under new restrictions, including reduced occupancy, more space between gamblers, and severely curtailed limits for meeting and convention spaces.

Domestic flight volume was off 74.7%, while international flight volume fell 99.98% — from 327,127 in June 2019 to just 70 passengers this June.

Southwest Airlines, the largest carrier at McCarran, served 543,592 passengers, more than doubling its June total of 229.622, but down sharply from last June's total of 1.49 million.

Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said on an earnings call Thursday the "unexpected'' jump in coronavirus cases in July and resulting fall-off in business has forced Southwest to start adjusting its flight schedules for August and September.

"We've seen a dramatic impact to our trends, as far as traffic, revenue and bookings,'' he said on the airline's earnings conference call Thursday.

Spirit Airlines had the biggest year-over-year loss among the airports top five carriers, losing 80.7% of its passenger volume compared with last June. Las Vegas-based Allegiant Airlines lost 56% of its traffic, falling from 224,455 passengers last June to 98,855 this June.
 
"We've seen another setback in demand,'' Spirit CEO Ted Christie told Wall Street analysts and reporters Thursday. "We expect the rest of the summer to remain challenging for us and the industry.''

The low point for McCarran so far in 2020 was reached in April, which saw a total of just over 150,000 passengers.