Part of Sun Country Air's revival is bet on Nevada gambling

MENDOTA HEIGHTS, Minn. AP) - Sun Country Airlines is staking its rebound in large part on a Minnesota native who built a city in a desert.

Don Laughlin, creator of Laughlin, Nev., has agreed to buy 100 of 165 seats on every plane Sun Country flies from the Twin Cities to his small town 90 miles south of Las Vegas.

As a result, the town has become Sun Country's top destination as it rebuilds scheduled service after financial difficulties forced it to close in December and begin a reorganization in bankruptcy court.

The airline expects to emerge from the bankruptcy proceedings this week. Under the restructuring, investors led by Burnsville attorney Robert Daly will buy the Sun Country name and selected assets now owned by US Bank.

While he won't have a stake in the airline, Laughlin will play a key role in its future.

Laughlin resells to travelers the Sun Country seats he buys. They become part of the package that includes a stay at one of his hotels in his town, including his Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino. Since Laughlin started the hotel in 1966, the unincorporated town has grown to 8,000 people and 11 casino-hotels.

The arrangement with Sun Country began earlier this year and the town has found gamblers who fly in and spend $100 to $300 daily in the casinos. The typical Laughlin visitor, often a retiree arriving by bus, spends just $30 a day.

That means Don's Laughlin Riverside Resort can offer a three-day air and hotel package from the Twin Cities for $199, an amount that many hotels in Las Vegas charge for just one night's stay.

Bonnie Meyer, a 49-year-old real estate agent from Minnetonka, is an ideal visitor. She and seven friends heard about the casino deal and were attracted to the town's golf courses. "It's a good, cheap trip," Meyer said after getting off the Sun Country flight in Laughlin last week.

"You can't beat the value here," says Kerry Louks of Duluth, who was on his third trip to Laughlin with his wife, Joyce. "We'd been to Las Vegas several times, and we just like it here a little more. We like the laid-back pace."

Flying to Laughlin makes sense for Sun Country. The carrier used to come here when it was a strictly a charter carrier. Now, it's running 15 flights a week to Laughlin and hopes to build that to 100.

"We had a taste of this before and we liked the taste," said Duane Lafleur, the liaison between the airline and Laughlin casinos, who worked for Don Laughlin before coming to the airline. "We knew about their financial troubles, but it seemed like every airline was in trouble at that time, so we weren't scared."

Sun Country wants to get the bigger hotels in Laughlin to subsidize more seats on the flights as their schedule grows, though several casinos beyond the Riverside are part of the program.

Laughlin's casinos generally sell out on weekends, but they're less busy during the week and in summer. With Sun Country passengers, they aim to fill some of those empty rooms and perhaps displace some of its lowest-margin gamblers, which would allow hotel rates to increase.

"They have to be careful because if the air service goes away, they'll have to court those (low (margin)- people again," said John Bowen, a gambling marketing professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

"They should build up the service slowly, but every gaming market in the country would like to have what they're doing," he said.

--

archive