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Chapter 2: Las Vegas! "Here we come!" 2.5 Dealing with the airlines: Getting the best rate About 39 million visitors travel to Las Vegas every year with most of them arriving by air. Many airlines serve Las Vegas McCarran International Airport. You’ll find a list here of the major ones. McCarran is the seventh busiest airport in the U.S. based on domestic passengers boarded. It is located 5 miles from the Vegas strip. The top two
largest scheduled airlines at McCarran in
number of passengers carried are Southwest
Airlines and US Airways. Together they account
for nearly half of all passengers flying in and
out of Las Vegas. Both specialize in
high-frequency, low fare flights. McCarran International Airport has two public passenger terminals. Terminal 1 handles most flights and contains an overall 96 gates in four concourses. Terminal 2 primarily handles international and charter flights. A new $1.6 billion Terminal 3 opening in 2012 will provide 14 additional gates. Southwest’s number one destination city is Las Vegas where it handles more than 225 fights a day non-stop to and from more than 50 U.S. cities. Southwest Airlines is the busiest air carrier at McCarran International Airport. It is ranked number one in fewest Customer complaints. Strangely, due to the so-called "Wright Amendment", Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport - its headquarters city - is not one of them. (They fly out of Dallas Love Field near the downtown area.) But this could change in the years ahead. Its 21 gates in Las Vegas are located in Terminal 1, Concourse B and C.
Southwest Airlines
Vacations offers
complete air/hotel vacation packages to Las
Vegas as well as to destinations across the
U.S. Southwest Airlines Vacations partners with
many major Las Vegas hotels. US Airways The new airline retained the US Airways name based on research that showed the US Airways name had better brand recognition worldwide than America West. US Airways operates 3,130 flights a day to 200 destinations in 30 countries from its hubs in Phoenix, Charlotte and Philadelphia. Since the merger, US Airways has been headquartered at the former America West corporate offices in Tempe, Arizona, and America West executives and board members are largely in control of the merged company. US Airways has a very poor record of addressing customer complaints. The two airlines are a good match. US Airways is strong on the East Coast and has routes to Europe and the Caribbean ...while America West’s strength is the Western U.S. and has routes to Hawaii.
US
Airways
Vacations,
(Tel. 800-455-0123) sells vacation packages to
hundreds of thousands of vacationers annually.
US Airways flights depart from McCaran
Airport’s Terminal 1, Concourse A and
B. Other low cost airlines that
you might want to try are JetBlue,
and AirTran.
When one airline announces a fare sale or promotion, many other airlines will match it .... especially when it is a competitive market. A good place to check out recent online fare sales is Travelersnet.
A new breed of travel search engine companies are challenging the big three, Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity. These new "metasearch" sites can simultaneously scan dozens of travel sites, (including airlines) for the best airfare prices. You can then do a side-by-side comparison rather than having to check many different sites. If you are looking for a cheap airfare only (no hotel) be sure to check out: Mobissimo, Qixo and Kayak.
Best prices at the last minute
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Factoid: Six and a
half million people visit Las Vegas for the
first time every year!
Factoid: Sixteen of the twenty largest hotels in the world are in Las Vegas. |
Southwest Airlines
began as a small Texas Airline in 1971 with
three Boeing 737 aircraft serving three Texas
cities: Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. It
has been flying to Las Vegas since 1982. Today,
Southwest is the largest U.S. carrier based on
domestic passengers boarded. Their fleet
consists of more than 500 Boeing 737
aircraft.
US Airways, Inc. is a major
airline based in the U.S. It is the sixth
largest airline by traffic. Bankrupt US Airways
merged in May 2005 with America West Airlines
in a $1.5 billion deal that created the
nation's largest budget airline with service
throughout the United States and overseas.
America West was launched in Tempe in 1983 with
a fleet of three planes and a couple of hundred
employees.