Las Vegas airport

Quote: Pacomartin

Partly because in the late 80s Southwest Airlines was still making two intermediate stops to fly across the country. It's difficult to believe that Southwest did not fly transcontinental until 9-15-2002 when they began Baltimore-Washington International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport.

At the time none of the smaller planes could quite fly non-stop across the continent. I'm sure all transcontinental traffic was taken care of by DC-10s and 747s. In fact, I think that was one of the design motives for the 757.

Southwest's "hubs" are Las Vegas, Phoenix, Baltimore, and Midway. You can just look at "where we fly" diagrams for each airline to find the hubs.

Moving the airport anywhere away from downtown LAS would be a disaster but might be necessary. However, there are only four runways. The passenger capability of the airport from flights alone without new runways is about 53,000,000 passengers / year. Terminal 2 is going to be demolished.

2014's McCarran traffic was 42.9 million passengers and about 128 aircraft movements per hour (64 departures / arrivals). That number will rise a bit with the new FAA regulations coming into effect which allows for closer separations between planes.

Terminal 3 and its 14 gates are going all international. As a tip, if you are going out of the "D" gates, use terminal three. Security is generally shorter. I wonder what the taxi lines are like there.

The gates at the airport is not the issue, it's the runway. If the airport can remain below capacity until the FAA rules take into effect there won't be need for a new airport. Primm was always the Vegas alternate airport.

Quote: boymimbo

However, there are only four runways. The passenger capability of the airport from flights alone without new runways is about 53,000,000 passengers / year. 2014's McCarran traffic was 42.9 million.

London Heathrow Airport had 73,408,442 passengers in 2014 with two runway
London Gatwick Airport had 38,105,747 passengers in 2014 with one runway
Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City had 34,255,739 in 2014 with a pair of runways too close to support independent operations. One is a takeoff and the other is landing, but takeoff and landing don't happen at the same time.

Regional authorities have built new airports since the 1960's.
DFW Dallas September 20–23, 1973
DIA Denver February 28, 1995
AUS Austin–Bergstrom International Airport May 23, 1999


No one knows how a regional authority can build a brand new reliever airport. They always close the old one. Only federal governments can build an airport without closing the old one (like Washington Dulles or Tokyo Narita). The cost of floating the construction bonds, then waiting for sometimes 20 years until the airport can support itself.

Quote: boymimbo

Moving the airport anywhere away from downtown LAS would be a disaster but might be necessary. However, there are only four runways. The passenger capability of the airport from flights alone without new runways is about 53,000,000 passengers / year. Terminal 2 is going to be demolished.

Moving the airport would require some cheap form of transportation from it to the Strip and Downtown. Cabs are rather expensive as it is, considering the short distance involved already. Light rail would be good, and not too expensive to build.

Quote:

Terminal 3 and its 14 gates are going all international. As a tip, if you are going out of the "D" gates, use terminal three. Security is generally shorter. I wonder what the taxi lines are like there.

In three trips from there, security has been brisk. I've never taken a cab, though, only shuttles. The counters right outside are often unstaffed. But there are several so one or two are bound to be in service.

Quote: Nareed

Moving the airport would require some cheap form of transportation from it to the Strip and Downtown.

Light Rail was the proposal, but as usual there has to be enough passengers to justify the rail. So they always propose buses as an interim.

Then comes the question of who should go to the new airport and who can remain at the old airport? They always look at the international passengers first. At McCarran International passengers only account for less than 8% of the total passengers in 2014, and over 50% of those come from two Canadian airlines.

Well, immediately some of the foreign airlines say they will stop service. Magnicharters and Vivaaerobus from Mexico are Ultra Low Cost Carriers, and may find they have no passengers that want the additional costs.

1,104,994 Westjet Airlines
631,620 Air Canada
299,720 Virgin Atlantic Airways
292,837 British Airways
272,235 Aeromexico
225,940 Volaris
147,581 Copa Airlines
74,262 Condor Flugdienst
70,365 Korean Airlines
59,295 ABC Aerolinease DBA Interjet
51,458 Thomas Cook Airlines
40,036 Sunwing Airlines
26,578 Grupo Aereo Monterrey de C.V. Magnicharters S.A.
26,196 Edelweiss Air AG
6,203 Air TransAt
4,969 XL Airways France
2,462 Vivaaerobus (Aeroenlaces Nacionales S.A. de C.V.)
2,084 Air Europa Lineas Aereas, S.A.
1,626 Swissport Misc. Charter
1,606 Delta
1,427 Omni Air International
425 Servisair LLC
322 Universal Weather
247 Atlas Air
160 Air North
3,344,648

After you kick out the International Airlines and possibly the charters, then what do you do? You can't force an airline by name to move. You can sometimes entice them with offers of a new quarters, but the low cost carriers only care about their base cost. Southwest would not move to new quarters if it cost them an extra dime.

17,042,005 Southwest
4,577,813 American
3,714,110 United Airlines
3,596,193 Delta
2,282,675 Spirit Airlines
2,196,675 Allegiant
500,487 Hawaiian Airlines, Inc.

Sometimes they try to divide them by regional jets which can stay at old airport, but it rarely works. Sometimes they say flights of 1000 miles or less can stay at the old airport and longer flights have to go to the new airport. Bottom line is there is no way to do it, except to subsidize the new airport for 10-20 years until it grows on it's own. Only federal governments can afford to subsidize airports, and nobody is going to do that for Vegas.

Quote: boymimbo

Moving the airport anywhere away from downtown LAS would be a disaster but might be necessary.

Is it even possible to move it? IIRC the feds own most all of the land when you get outside the Las Vegas metro area. It is for this reason that the area has only sprawled so far and houses are on mini-lots. Once out of town, LAS had the city grow out to it, similar to Phoenix. Would the feds sell the land not just for the airport but all the services that give an airport area backbone?

Quote: Pacomartin

Light Rail was the proposal, but as usual there has to be enough passengers to justify the rail. So they always propose buses as an interim.

Other than subways, rail has an astonishingly horrible track record in the Americas from the Jet age onwards.

You'd think it would be a great idea to connect an airport to a city because 1) no traffic and 2) the possibility of higher than street or freeway speeds. But this usually loses to badly located stations, high prices and ultimately frequent breakdowns.

Just look at the Monorail in Vegas. The stations are very far from the Strip, even though they're almost all attached to Strip hotels. The cost per day is higher than a bus pass for 24 hours. I don't know about breakdowns, but I suppose it's only a matter of time.

Quote:

Then comes the question of who should go to the new airport and who can remain at the old airport?

They may as well settle it with an old-fashioned dog fight. But it would get boring with passenger jets and no weapons... :)

Quote: AZDuffman

Is it even possible to move it? IIRC the feds own most all of the land when you get outside the Las Vegas metro area. ... Would the feds sell the land not just for the airport but all the services that give an airport area backbone?

Legislation was signed on October 28, 2000, allowing Clark County to purchase land for a new commercial airport. Clark County bought 6,500 acres of land in the Ivanpah Valley from the Bureau of Land Management about 30 miles southwest of McCarran International Airport for the Ivanpah Airport. This location is between Jean and Primm. The airport had been planned to open in 2017, however the Clark County Department of Aviation announced the project was put on temporary hold as of June 2010 until demand & air traffic and tourism to Las Vegas increases.



Incidentally, the location would essentially establish a new international record for distance from downtown to the airport without a rail line.The airports in Oslo Norway, and Narita Japan have the current records, and they both have dedicated rail lines (Narita actually has two rail lines). The Oslo line is 40 miles long. Narita Express takes 53 minutes, and I believe it is 45 miles long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Airport,_Gardermoen#History

It would also set a record in the USA for length of a single light rail line. Light Rail is normally used for distances no more than 15 miles. Oslo does not have a light rail, but instead has a regular High Speed Train. But the difference is that Oslo is surrounded by mountains, and there actually is a fairly large suburb out by the airport which also uses the rail line which goes a long way to justifying it's cost. Narita does not use light rail, but it is not HSR either.

There are differences. LHR has much bigger planes which allows for the higher passenger counts (mostly wide-body). LAS does have runway restrictions in high winds and there are many times when only one set of runway can be used.

here is a very interesting paper on LAS

Quote: boymimbo

There are differences. LHR has much bigger planes which allows for the higher passenger counts (mostly wide-body). LAS does have runway restrictions in high winds and there are many times when only one set of runway can be used.

See, I hear that a lot. People just assume that the London airports of Gatwick and Heathrow are never ending lines of widebodies, where the B767s are crowded out by the B747s and A380s. But if you look at the hard data, there are more widebodies, certainly, but not nearly as many as you might believe.

The other point with San Diego is the hours are restricted. But London airports are not really that busy at night even though they don't have hard restrictions.

2014 airport use passengers
4 runways 42,885,350 Las Vegas
1 runway 38,105,747 London Gatwick
1 runway 18,756,997 San Diego

While there are mitigating factors where Southwestern USA airports have problems that London airports don't have, these factors are not nearly strong enough to justify the statements that are widely repeated that SAN cannot handle more than 23-26 MAP because of the single runway, and LAS cannot handle more than 52 MAP because of the runways.

That said, outside of Denver, most airports in the USA cannot support unlimited growth. But the historical record has shown that building reliever airports without closing the original airport are massively expensive. Also, there is no real track record of taking people economically to an airport 30 or more miles from the downtown. Only very train intensive societies can do it (like Tokyo and Oslo). And Oslo probably couldn't do it, but they have no choice, and they have a large suburb near the airport that also uses the train.

A great deal can be done by forcing the airlines to use planes of over 170 seats. Regional airplanes should be used at regional airports, not to fine tune financial models. Older narrowbodies should be used at small airports or retired. More emphasis must be made on checking in at remote locations and minimizing time spent at the airport. Luggage could be collected and run through security at remote locations and taken directly to the plane.