McCarran International Airport

Las Vegas-McCarran
Las Vegas, NV 89119, USA

McCarran International Airport (IATA: LAS, ICAO: KLAS, FAA LID: LAS) is the principal commercial airport serving Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada, United States.

The airport is located five miles (8 km) south of the central business district of Las Vegas, in the unincorporated area of Paradise in Clark County. It covers an area of 2,800 acres (1,100 ha) and has four runways.

McCarran is owned by Clark County and operated by the Clark County Department of Aviation (DOA). It serves as a focus city for Allegiant Air, Southwest Airlines, and US Airways; McCarran is also the largest operation base for both Allegiant and Southwest. It is named after the former Nevada Senator Pat McCarran.

In 2008, McCarran ranked 15th in the world for passenger traffic, with 44,074,707 passengers passing through the terminal. The airport ranked 6th in the world for aircraft movements with 578,949 takeoffs and landings. McCarran and the DOA are completely self-sufficient enterprises, requiring no money from the County's general fund.

As of September 2008, Southwest Airlines operated more flights out of McCarran than at any other airport. Southwest also carries the most passengers in and out of McCarran. Southwest currently operates out of 21 gates, primarily in Concourse C. The US Airways night-flight hub operation, established in 1986 by predecessor America West Airlines, makes the carrier McCarran's second busiest airline.

Due to the 2008 energy crisis the night hub was closed in September 2008. US Airways will also cut another seven flights by the end of the year, resulting in a drastic decrease of the airline's operations at McCarran.

The top five largest scheduled airlines at McCarran in number of passengers carried in 2007 are Southwest Airlines (34.63%), US Airways/ US Airways Express (21.98%), United Airlines/ United Express (7.16%), Delta Air Lines/ Delta Connection (5.67%), and American Airlines/ American Eagle (4.84%).

McCarran Airport has more than 1,300 slot machines throughout the airport terminals. The slots are owned and operated by Michael Gaughan Airport Slots. Reno/Tahoe International Airport also has gambling machines both airside and landside.

Maximum capacity for the airport is estimated at 53 million passengers and 625,000 aircraft movements. As McCarran is predicted to reach this capacity around 2017, Ivanpah Airport is planned as a relief airport.