Nearly 4 million travelers passed the gates of McCarran International Airport in August as air travel continues to feel the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The 3.8 million passengers who flew over McCarran last month were down 14 percent on Monday, according to the Clark County Department of Aviation, from the same month in 2019 when 4.4 million passengers were checked out at the airport .
Passenger traffic, which includes both departing and arriving flights, also fell 8.3 percent from July, when 4.15 million passed the airport gates – the first time McCarran topped the 4 million mark since January 2020 would have.
In addition to the ramifications related to the pandemic, airport spokesman Joe Rajchel noted that Spirit Airlines had a prolonged network outage earlier in the month that likely impacted passenger traffic.
“That led to cancellations and undoubtedly had an impact,” said Rajchel.
Spirit counted 367,873 passengers, a 27 percent decrease from the 508,829 travelers in July. The previous month’s total was also 24 percent below the August 2019 figure of 487,162 passengers.
As of August, McCarran is 30 percent below the first eight months of 2019, serving 23.9 million passengers that year, up from 34.2 million in the same period in 2019.
Southwest Airlines, McCarran’s busiest airline, accounted for 1.42 million passengers in August, down 3 percent from 1.46 million passengers in August 2019.
Frontier Airlines was one of two airlines with higher passenger traffic than in August 2019, with passenger traffic increasing 44 percent from 259,119 in the same month in 2019 to 374,907 passengers last month.
The other airline that saw an increase was JetBlue, which saw a 4 percent increase from 97,221 passengers in August 2019 to 101,967 in August that year.
Frontier is also the only airline whose passenger traffic in McCarran increased through August compared to the first eight months of 2019. Frontier recorded 1.8 million in the first eight months of 2019 but has carried 2.3 million passengers this year, a good 27 percent increase.
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.
