No more late night flights LAS><PHX Conspiracy?
 

Back in the America West and US Air days you could fly from Vegas to Phoenix at 10pm, 11pm and 1:30am and even later. I really miss those late night flights. Is there a conspiracy with the Casinos to ground people in LAS?

When jet fuel costs spiked to well over $3/gal and US was very near another Ch 11 filing, US eliminated the late night LAS hub operations. The LAS hub made sense at the very low wage scales paid to the US employees in combination with low fuel prices. When fuel prices spiked, the hub was closed. Not a casino conspiracy.

Don't a lot of visitors to Vegas just stay up all night and fly back before breakfast?

US' two night banks were a holdover from HP's glory days in the 90s, when HP's low-price, low-cost expansion was based on doing things like using LAS as a night hub (these flights were a whopping 50% connecting traffic - LAS today, by comparison, is more than 90% O/D). Obviously not sustainable through oil spikes as FWAAA mentioned, and I doubt would be sustainable in today's LCC climate.

Ummm yeah.: Casinos colluded with big oil to jack up oil prices to cause billions in losses to the whole industry so 3 unprofitable odd hour flights would get cut out of LAS. Yes the question was that absurd.

I used to walk up last minute in the 80's and pay $29 or $39 each way and take the late flight out, and early flight back.

Always fun except when the cops set up a speed trap right before terminal 2. No trip that night!

LAS has been a WN hub for some time, AA has better things to do with their planes.

Does Vegas have a grassy knoll?

No.

Back in the day, there were smoking sections on planes. Now there aren't. Is this a conspiracy against Big Tobacco?

No.

/end thread

I was thankful for the late night LAS-PHX service a few years ago when LAS was still a LUS hub.. Our MBJ-CLT flight was delayed due to weather and as a result we misconnected on our CLT-PHX flight home (got to the gate to see the aircraft being pushed back from the gate after a pretty quick immigration/CBP process - if only US hadn't taken so long to get the bags unloaded, or we would have been fine) There was a CLT-LAS flight about 15 mins after our original flight and with the late night LAS-PHX service still operational, we were only about 2.5 hrs late in getting home. The bags were a different story though! ;)

You also have to consider that back in the 90s, Vegas was one of the rare places you could go to get a full slate of gambling. Not so at all in 2017. Why take a late flight PHX-LAS when you can head over to Talking Stick or Casino Arizona and be back in your own bed at 4 AM?

With the new legislation of pot for recreation purpose in NV, LAS late night flight might be revived! :cool::p [just mentioning, no other purpose other than joining the conservation]

America West had a dual hub - with more daytime focus on PHX and more nighttime focus on LAS. If, for example, you were flying from DCA to LAX in the evening, you could leave DCA around 830pm, arrive at LAS at 11pm, toss some quarters in the slots in the terminal (which had awful payback rates), and catch a midnight flight to LAX. That terminal was hopping between 11pm and 130am.

They had a ton of flights between LAS and PHX, because some routings involved two changes.

That was more than twenty years ago.

The proliferation of casinos elsewhere in America, combined with Southwest's growth in Vegas, the AA/HP/US mergers and loss of the America West brand, the cost of jet fuel and other changes in the economy led to the dismantling of the late night hub in Vegas.

Vegas was always a low yield market for the airlines, and the late night hub economic model didn't work well enough any more.

I miss it. But I also miss the Sands, the Castaways, the sports book at the Stardust, the really good cheap prime rib specials, Lefty, Gene Maday, and Jeannie the cocktail waitress who once dated Elvis. But those days are gone now, and they ain't comin' back.

Good times.

I had thought smoking sections were a conspiracy created by Big Tobacco.

Who in their right mind would want to leave LAS at 1:30 am and arrive PHX at 3:30 am? That makes CO's LAS-IAH redeye that used to leave LAS at 1 am and arrive IAH at 5 am look civilized!