Discount airlines are especially important for folks who want to book a Vegas vacation. It helps keep cash in their pocket – at least until they hit the casinos (or the gate, more on that a bit later).
Southwest Airlines already offers Portland, Ore. flights to Las Vegas. So too does classy Alaska Airlines. Come Sept. 22, add discount airline Spirit to the list. The competition is welcome because, according to the Port of Portland, “Las Vegas is our most traveled route, with some 450,000 passengers flying each year between PDX and Las Vegas.”
Spirit has scheduled a pair of daily roundtrips. Portland flights to Las Vegas depart at 7:30 a.m. and 6:10 p.m. and arrive at McCarran International Airport at 9:30 a.m. and 8:10 p.m. respectively.
Return Las Vegas flights to Portland depart at 3:30 p.m. and 8:55 p.m., getting to the gate at PDX at 5:30 p.m. and 10:55 p.m.
The remarkable thing about Las Vegas is that the gaming begins the moment you alight from the airplane. Slot machines populate the gate areas. Please, don’t take this to the bank, but this Cheapflights reporter has found one the best times to try your luck is early Sunday morning, after the Saturday night crowd has cleared out of the airport. That’s when the slots seem (could just be my wishful thinking) loosest.
Spirit picks and chooses the places it wants to fly carefully, and the market from PDX to LAS seems ripe. The discount airline is the quintessential “unbundled” carrier – you pay for what you want. Spirit lofts some 150 daily flights to an expanding route structure that, as of now, numbers 40-plus destinations.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: Thierry)
