3.8M travelers pass through McCarran Airport in June

June’s total is 14 percent off the same month in 2019, when 4.4 million passengers traveled through McCarran, according to data released by the airport Wednesday.

For the year, McCarran has tallied 16 million passengers, 37 percent behind the first six months of 2019, which had surpassed the 25.2 million mark.

Southwest Airlines, McCarran’s busiest carrier, was off pre-pandemic levels by only 6 percent with 1.4 million passengers last month compared with 1.5 million in June 2019.

Southwest noted a strong increase in leisure travel, with CEO Gary Kelly saying in the airline’s second-quarter earnings call last week that he expects that to continue.

“Based on current bookings, leisure passenger traffic and fares in July are expected to trend higher than July 2019 levels,” Kelly said during the call. “Business revenues continue to lag leisure revenue trends. However, we are encouraged by the improvement in business revenues in second quarter 2021, and we continue to experience steady weekly improvements in business bookings, thus far, in July.”

Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air served 205,068 passengers in June, down only 9 percent compared with 176,053 travelers in the same month in 2019.

Frontier Airlines eclipsed its June 2019 passenger totals last month, going from 247,733 passengers the same month two years ago to 345,219 last month.

“We’re very proud of the remarkable growth Frontier has experienced in Las Vegas with a 73 percent increase in daily flight departures since 2019,” the airline said in a statement. “Las Vegas is truly the Entertainment Capital of the World and, as demand has rebounded, we’ve ramped up our operational network to now offer 54 nonstop routes via McCarran International Airport.”

International travel is still a key missing factor in McCarran getting closer to normal levels. There were just 53,403 international travelers last month, down 84 percent from June 2019’s 327,127 passengers.

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.