Southern Nevada tourism received some good news and some bad news on international air service last week.
First, the bad.
In late April, British Midland - better known as BMI - will pull the plug on its nonstop route between Manchester, England, and McCarran International Airport.
Since Halloween 2004 BMI flew an Airbus A330 jumbo jet three times a week to Las Vegas. But the company says the route has underperformed and high fuel costs make it impossible to continue.
“The decision to with�draw long-haul services from Manchester was a very tough one, since we have operated (some of) these routes since 2001,” the airline said on its Web site. “However, sadly, the routes have never performed to the revenue levels we hoped to achieve, which combined with 2008 fuel price increases means we still see little prospect of improvement.”
BMI was the 12th busiest international carrier at McCarran in 2007, serving more than 55,000 passengers.
A sales representative said the company could reconsider the route when BMI’s acquisition by German airline giant Lufthansa is completed early next year.
Not to seem overly pessimistic, but I doubt that’s going to happen. When a carrier exits a market, it usually does so with sound economic reasons, so I doubt Lufthansa’s deeper pockets would finance a route that ultimately disappoints for the long haul.
BMI management apparently was disappointed with the amount of traffic generated from Las Vegas to Manchester - an argument I’ve never completely understood since it’s the traffic
Las Vegas that is going to generate the most interest and most of those coming here have to go back. Why not just reduce the number of flights from three to two a week? That’s a question I would have asked had BMI managers returned my calls and e-mails.
When BMI leaves the market, it will trim the number of carriers offering nonstop trans-Atlantic flights to two, with Virgin Atlantic - an airline that our governor may have recently ticked off by writing a letter of support for a cause supported by its biggest competitor, British Airways - from London to Las Vegas and Lufthansa-owned Condor, which flies nonstop from Frankfurt, Germany.
Despite that bad news for the local tourism industry, which is banking on increased international traffic to help boost sagging visitor numbers, there was some good news. It came from the busiest carrier at McCarran, Southwest Airlines, which isn’t an international flier.
Southwest announced it will work with Mexican carrier Volaris to develop a code-share agreement to link Mexican travelers to the United States and vice versa.
Southwest gave customers a view of how it would develop its code shares when the company had a deal with ATA - a deal that ended in March when ATA abruptly declared bankruptcy and quit flying.
Under Southwest’s ATA agreement, the airline offered flights on its Web site to places like New York LaGuardia Airport via Chicago Midway Airport. Las Vegans making that trip would fly Southwest to Midway and transfer to an ATA flight from Chicago to New York. The baggage transfer was seamless and passengers could earn frequent-flier points partially delivered by ATA.
Free trips earned on Southwest also could be used on ATA - which flew to Hawaii from Las Vegas.
Southwest said it hopes to announce more details about its partnership with Volaris next year and begin offering the connections by 2010.
Volaris, founded in 2006, is new enough to the market that a lot of people don’t know much about it. It has 39 routes connecting 23 cities south of the border. But, like Southwest’s planned code-share partner north of the border, Canada’s WestJet, Volaris has many similarities to Southwest.
It’s known as a discounter. It flies to some alternative airports (the center of its operations is in Toluca, outside Mexico City). It has a primary aircraft type, the Airbus A319 and A320 series, both twin-engine jets similar to Southwest’s Boeing 737s.
But where would Southwest and Volaris connect?
Right now, Volaris doesn’t fly into the United States, and Southwest has said it has no desire to begin flying south of the border. The closest Volaris flies to the U.S. is to Tijuana, Mexico, one of the airline’s busiest destinations.
Southwest has numerous routes and destinations near the Mexican border: San Diego, Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas, among them. But would Southwest instead try to connect at some of its busiest stations to serve a maximum number of passengers - such as Houston, Los Angeles or even Las Vegas?
McCarran officials acknowledged Volaris made an initial contact last week about flying into Las Vegas. It’s still too early to know whether that means Las Vegas would be the transfer point in the Southwest-Volaris code share, but at least it’s a possibility.
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