First nonstop flight from Paris arrives at McCarran

By Richard N. Velotta

Published Thursday, May 27, 2010 | 4:53 p.m.

Updated Thursday, May 27, 2010 | 9:09 p.m.

Las Vegas showgirls are commonly part of the welcoming party when new international flights begin at McCarran International Airport.

When XL Airways France made its inaugural run from Paris to Las Vegas on Thursday, two Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority-hired showgirls greeting passengers on the first flight had a little competition for attention. Six performers from “Le Femme,” the MGM Grand’s Crazy Horse Paris dance troupe, offered sultry smiles to the more than 300 passengers who made the 11-hour trip on XL’s twin-engine A330 jumbo jet.

For Laurent Magnin, CEO of the small French airline, it was all good.

“About a year ago, some people from Las Vegas visited me in Paris and asked me if we could fly to Las Vegas,” Magnin said in a brief press conference after the arrival at McCarran’s Terminal 2. “And like your president (Barack Obama), I can say, ‘Yes we can.’”

XL is flying the Paris-Las Vegas route twice a week, Thursdays and Sundays, through Sept. 23. Magnin said beyond that date it could be challenging for the airline, which has only six jets in its fleet, to sell enough seats, noting that savvy French travelers are more inclined to go to warm-weather destinations like Mexico and the Caribbean later in the year.

After the briefing, Magnin and 19 French tourism industry VIPs started their Las Vegas adventure.

They stayed at — of course — Paris-Las Vegas. About 35 French journalists who also made the trip and will see some of the city’s sites and write about and photograph them are being put up at The Mirage.

Among the passengers on the first flight was LVCVA senior vice president of operations Terry Jicinsky, who boosted the Las Vegas marketing effort for a week leading up to the first flight. Jicinsky said France is now one of Las Vegas’ top five overseas markets.

The XL flight typically will leave Paris at 3:30 p.m., local time, arriving at McCarran at 6:05 p.m. The return flight leaves Las Vegas at 8:20 p.m., arriving in Charles de Gaulle International Airport at 3:15 p.m. the following day.

The first flight left Paris late, made some time up on the trip and arrived only 13 minutes behind schedule. The jet took a slight detour when taxiing to the gate to pass through a water arch marking the first flight.

“Based on XL Airways’ current schedule, the airline could bring more than 10,000 visitors to Las Vegas this summer,” Clark County Director of Aviation Randall Walker said in a release announcing the first flight.

Walker said that according to the LVCVA’s 2009 Las Vegas Visitor Profile study, those visitors could generate more than $9.7 million in local gaming expenditures.

XL flies scheduled charter flights from Paris to 52 destinations in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America and the Caribbean on its fleet of six jets, which include two large planes capable of making long overseas flights.

International flights to Las Vegas have been one of the few bright spots for the local tourism economy.

Canada-based WestJet Airlines has experienced double-digit percentage growth in the last two years at McCarran, and the local tourism industry was enthused with the start-up of daily nonstop flights from London’s Heathrow International Airport by British Airways in October.

European arrivals are up by more than 15 percent over last year, despite nearly a week of flight cancellations because of a volcanic eruption in Iceland that made flying through the ash cloud too dangerous.

McCarran officials said recent arrivals activity is running 50 percent to 60 percent ahead of last year’s pace — about 1,650 passengers a day. That doesn’t include most Canadian arrivals that typically are pre-cleared by border authorities before they leave Canada.