New Carrier to Seek Piece of LAX-Las Vegas Market

A new airline received federal approval Friday to enter the hotly contested Los Angeles-Los Vegas market. National Airlines Inc. said it will begin booking reservations Monday on the route that is dominated by Southwest Airlines.

Privately held National, which will be based in Las Vegas, plans to offer four daily flights between Los Angeles International Airport and McCarren International Airport beginning May 27, with two additional daily flights scheduled to begin in June, National spokesman Dik Shimizu said.

Even with six flights between LAX and Las Vegas, National would fall short of route leader Southwest, which operates 16 daily flights on the route, and its closest competitor, United Airlines, with 10. No. 3 AmericaWest offers nine.

Those three airlines have posted round-trip fares for May 27 of $78. They require a seven-day advance purchase and a minimum one-night stay. Shimizu declined to comment on how much National intends to charge for the same service.

The upstart carrier needs to charge close to $78 if it hopes to compete with the likes of Southwest, said Terry Trippler, publisher of Best Fares magazine. “In my assessment, there isn’t much room for a new airline in any market that Southwest is in,” Trippler said. “[National is] going up against the granddaddy of low-fare airlines. They better know what they are doing.”

Shimizu said National plans to carve out a niche largely by striking code-share deals with foreign airlines that fly into LAX. The idea, he said, is for National to provide an LAX-Las Vegas leg for foreign carriers looking to offer service to the gaming and entertainment mecca.

National, which received clearance from the Transportation Department to begin taking reservations, must receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch operations.