Taking off: Reid airport honors 75th anniversary of first flight
When the first plane took off from what was then McCarran Field, there were 12 daily flights and four airlines..
Seventy-five years later, after the first flight on Dec. 19, 1948, there are an average of 555 daily flights with 31 airlines at recently renamed Harry Reid International Airport.
According to historical archives, McCarran Field originally was a general aviation airport formed in 1943 with three gravel runways built by George Crockett, a flight instructor and descendant of Davy Crockett, who honored his forefather’s battle at the Alamo by naming the airfield Alamo Field.
At the time, commercial air carriers shared an airport with the Army Air Force at what is now Nellis Air Force Base.
The military closed the base, forcing commercial airlines to a new location, but during the Cold War, Nellis was reopened.
The new location was named for Patrick McCarran, a U.S. senator from Nevada from 1933 to 1954.
McCarran Field opened with a dedication ceremony on Dec. 19 – two days after the 45th anniversary of the first flight by the Wright brothers in 1903.
When McCarran Field opened, the four airlines serving it were Western Air Express, Transcontinental Western Airlines, Bonanza Air Lines and United.
Of the four, only United is still standing under its original name.
Western Air Express eventually became Western Airlines. It established itself in Salt Lake City and merged in 1978 with Continental Airlines and that entity was absorbed by Delta Air Lines in 1986, keeping Salt Lake City as a hub.
Transcontinental Western eventually became Trans World Airlines, or TWA, and was acquired by American Airlines in 2001.
Bonanza, once based in Las Vegas, was one of the original airlines acquired by Howard Hughes and became Hughes Air West, bought out by Republic Airlines and eventually merged into Northwest Orient Airlines, which has since become Delta Air Lines.
”The Clark County Department of Aviation is looking forward to celebrating the 75th anniversary of Clark County’s acquisition of McCarran Field, beginning the journey of commercial aviation in Southern Nevada,” an airport representative said Monday. “It is incredible that what was just a small airfield has evolved into the 2,800-acre complex, known today as Harry Reid International Airport, that connects the world to Las Vegas.”
A ceremony commemorating the anniversary is scheduled at Tuesday’s Clark County Commission meeting.
In the first year of operations, McCarran Field served 35,000 passengers. In 2023, as Harry Reid International Airport, it expects to accommodate more than 50 million passengers. It had a record monthly passenger count in October of 5.47 million.
The change of the airport’s name began with discussions in February 2021. On Dec. 14, 2021, the airport was officially renamed for Reid, who served as a U.S. senator from Nevada from 1987 to 2017.
Officials estimated the cost of changing the name would be more than $5 million. To this day, signs designating McCarran International Airport still exist around the city.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.
