Southwest Airlines Plans to Land Crew Bases in Las Vegas; Airline’s Pilots and Flight Attendants Ready to Take Off for Nevada

DALLAS, Nov. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Southwest Airlines today announced plans to establish both a Pilot base and a Flight Attendant base at Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport by October 2007. The airline expects to initially locate 350 Pilots and 600 Flight Attendants in the new bases. The approximately 17,000 square-foot facilities will be located near the C Concourse at the airport. Southwest currently leases the space, but it will have to be built out to accommodate the crew bases.

“Las Vegas is Southwest’s largest operation, and it makes financial and operational sense for us to locate a crew base there,” said Mike Van de Ven, Southwest’s Executive Vice President and Chief of Operations. “We need to locate flight crews where we have a high concentration of aircraft, and we have a combined total of 225 flights leaving Las Vegas daily.”

The Las Vegas crew bases will complement Southwest’s seven current crew bases in Baltimore/Washington, Chicago Midway, Dallas, Houston, Oakland, Orlando, and Phoenix. The airline employs about 5,100 pilots and 8,800 flight attendants nationwide.

Southwest introduced service to Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport in 1982 with five daily nonstop departures. The airline’s service has since soared to 225 daily nonstop departures to 53 cities, including service to Southwest’s newest destination, Washington Dulles International Airport. Southwest currently employs about 887 people in its Las Vegas airport operations. Once the crew bases are fully staffed, Southwest expects to employ 600 Pilots and 1,000 Flight Attendants in Las Vegas, bringing Southwest’s ranks in Las Vegas to about 2,500 Employees.

http://www.southwest.com/

Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040715/DATH028-ahttp://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20010718/SWNULOOKhttp://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20010724/SWALOGOPRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com

Southwest Airlines

CONTACT: Public Relations of Southwest Airlines, +1-214-792-4847

Web site: http://www.southwest.com/