Rosemary Vassiliadis was named director of aviation for the Clark County Aviation Department in March 2013. She previously had served as deputy director of aviation since December 1997. She oversees all operations at McCarran International (LAS) in Las Vegas, as well as general aviation airports in North Las Vegas, Henderson, Jean and Overton, Nev.
LAS served nearly 43 million passengers in 2014, registering its fourth consecutive year of growth. The airport has adequate infrastructure for the near-term future and is set for a few years on the vast majority of its concessions contracts. ARN’s Carol Ward spoke with Vassiliadis about the current state of play at LAS and her goals for the near-term future, which center around continuing to increase non-aeronautical revenues and keeping costs to airlines low.
Ward: I know McCarran has been showing strong passenger growth recently. What factors are contributing to the growth trend, and are you expecting it to continue?
Vassiliadis: We have had some nice growth, some steady growth, which we are liking a lot better than the peak, double-digit growth that we had previously. We have just realized our fourth consecutive year of growth in passengers. International has been a tremendous story, growth on top of growth. We’re really excited that we’re seeing growth in our domestic traffic. We haven’t had that in a while, consistently, but now that has changed. Spirit [Airlines] has been growing here. Frontier [Airlines] just announced a huge increase in their flights. They are realigning their business model, going full forward into the low-cost carrier mode and we are one that will be benefiting from that. Even little things, like JetBlue [Airways] and Virgin America going East – which we desperately need anything going East – are making a difference. We are also getting a lot of what we call one-stops, where they fly from say, Asia to Seattle then on to Las Vegas. These growth trends of 2 percent or 3 percent a month [from the same month a year ago] is a success story because we know we’re going to maintain those seats. It’s not just taking advantage of a season. The airlines are realizing they’re going to be able to keep those planes full. The convention business is back, which is why we’re seeing the increases.
The full interview appears in the September print issue of Airport Revenue News. Click Here to subscribe.
