McCarran travel smooth despite East Coast storms

Let’s hope all those Thanksgiving gatherings are so smooth.

On what traditionally is one of the year’s busiest travel days — the day before Thanksgiving — arrivals and departures Wednesday at McCarran International Airport flowed like gravy over turkey and mashed potatoes.

Except for a few glitches late in the day brought on by wintry East Coast weather, most flights ran on schedule at McCarran all day, transporting thousands of families and friends to be together in unseasonably warm Southern Nevada or at colder locations everywhere else.

Late Wednesday, 61 flights were showing a late departure on McCarran’s website. In most cases, delays were the result of late arrivals from airports experiencing inclement weather. In some cases, the arrivals were coming from West Coast destinations because the planes being used on those flights were coming from the East. No cancellations were reported.

Most major airlines offered to waive fees for changing flights to earlier departures because the weather was expected to get worse through the day.

McCarran officials encouraged people traveling Wednesday or picking up arrivals to check with their airlines about potential delays and that is expected to continue for latecomers today.

The whole scenario is expected to be play out again Sunday when people return home after the four-day Thanksgiving weekend.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center reported weather delays of more than two hours from Boston’s Logan International Airport and more than an hour from Newark’s Liberty International Airport in New Jersey late Wednesday. Earlier in the day, there were weather delays of more than an hour at Philadelphia International Airport and New York’s LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy international airports

FlightView, a company that monitors air traffic nationwide, reported late Wednesday that 80 percent of McCarran’s arrivals and just under 80 percent of departures were running on time, meaning they would arrive or leave within 15 minutes of their scheduled times. The company said about 5 percent of the airport’s departures and 10 percent of its arrivals were running “very late,” or delayed by more than an hour.

McCarran officials encouraged departing passengers to arrive 90 minutes before a scheduled departure because ticket counter check-in and security checkpoint lines were expected to be longer than normal because of Thanksgiving holiday travel. Generally, McCarran’s Thanksgiving crowds aren’t as large as those experienced during major conventions and special events, but they were still heavier than normal.

Officials also encouraged passengers and those picking up arrivals to “know before you go” to the airport, verifying which terminals serve which airlines. Generally, all international arrivals as well as domestic flights on Alaska, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Sun Country, United and Virgin America use Terminal 3 and all others use Terminal 1.

McCarran marked the pillars at both Terminal 1 and Terminal 3 pickup curbs with numbers to make it easier for motorists to find their arriving parties.