McCarran International Airport passenger counts inched upward in August, reversing a two-month trend of slight declines.
Airport officials said today that 3.64 million passengers passed through McCarran’s gates, a 0.3 percent increase over August 2011. June and July counts were down by fractions of percentages as well.
A 9.1 percent increase in the growth of international traffic and flat numbers in domestic passengers offset a 10.5 percent decline in helicopter and scenic tour fliers for the month.
For the first eight months of 2012, passenger traffic is up 1.4 percent to 28 million passengers, thanks to an 11.4 percent increase in international passenger traffic and a 1 percent uptick in domestic travelers.
Among domestic carriers, Southwest Airlines and Allegiant Air moved the needle upward. Southwest served 1.46 million passengers in Las Vegas in August, a 4.4 percent increase over August 2011 and the third largest monthly total at McCarran in the airline’s history.
The 2012 totals don’t include some 32,000 passengers who used AirTran, an airline Southwest has acquired.
Allegiant, bolstered by its new nonstop service to and from Honolulu, saw passenger counts soar by 11 percent to 193,180 for the month, the second-best monthly performance of the year. Las Vegas-based Allegiant is now the No. 5 carrier in passengers served, behind Southwest, United, Delta and American.
International traffic continued to show the largest gains for McCarran.
Mexican discount carrier Volaris, which partners with Southwest, had a 79.4 percent increase in traffic to 22,246 passengers, and Condor Flugdienst, Korean Airlines, Sunwing of Canada and Vivaaerobus all had double-digit percentage increases.
Canadian discounter WestJet brought the most international passengers to Las Vegas in August with 70,602, more than double the number brought by the second-busiest international carrier, Virgin Atlantic.