Las Vegas airport renamed for former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid

By Hillary Davis (contact)

Published Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021 | 11:19 a.m.

Updated Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021 | 3:55 p.m.

At the curbside check-in counters and around the gift shops at the Las Vegas airport, and among the holiday garland over the heads of queuing travelers in Santa hats, digital signs flicked over to a new identity Tuesday: Harry Reid International Airport.

Dignitaries gathered this morning at Terminal 3 of the former McCarran International Airport to mark the switchover to honor the retired Democratic U.S. Senate majority leader and one of the most influential Nevadans in history.

Reid issued a statement saying it was the “greatest of honors” to have his name on the airport and thanking the people of Nevada for letting him serve.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life,” Reid, 82, said.

Reid and his wife, Landra, attended the ceremony virtually because of the “continued threat that COVID poses to Sen. Reid’s compromised immune system,” a statement from his office said.

Reid, a Searchlight native, said he had been flying in and out of the Las Vegas airport since the first time he got on a plane in 1958. “This airport has been my gateway to the world” and “long ago became synonymous with home,” he said.

“My dad was born in a two-room shack in a lonely spot in the Southern Nevada desert,” Reid’s eldest son, Rory, told those gathered for the dedication, held in a terminal his father championed be built even during the throes of the Great Recession. “All he had was a work ethic and a small circle of people who loved him.”

From that, Harry Reid rose to become one of the most prominent politicians in the country.

“Likewise, this city was born in a lonely spot in the Southern Nevada desert,” Rory Reid said. “It too relied on the grit and determination of a small circle of people that believed they could create its future. Because of them, this is the entertainment capital of the world.”

Rosemary Vassiliadis, Clark County director of aviation, said she had known no greater advocate for aviation than Reid in her nearly quarter century with the airport.

Before Terminal 3 opened in 2012, there was serious question if the $2.4 billion expansion would be completed as the Great Recession pummeled the country in general and Las Vegas in particular. But the Reid-sponsored Senate version of the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, included a tax relief provision that allowed the terminal’s construction to continue on schedule. This maintained badly needed jobs and saved millions of dollars in debt service costs, she said.

Reid was also instrumental in securing the funding for the airport’s $111 million air traffic control project, which was completed five years ago, and the funding and land swaps for what eventually will be a second commercial Las Vegas airport near Jean.

The initial land transfer act passed in 2000, and the planned new airport is still many years out. Reid’s shepherding demonstrates his vision and commitment to tourism, Nevada’s primary industry.

Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom led the charge last year to rebrand the county-controlled airport in honor of Reid, who served in the U.S. House from 1983 to 1987 and in the U.S. Senate from 1987 to 2017. The commission unanimously agreed to the change.

Reid was born in Searchlight, a tiny mining town south of Las Vegas, in 1939 and entered politics in 1969. He served as a state assemblyman, lieutenant governor and gaming commissioner before heading to Washington.

Gov. Steve Sisolak said he wouldn’t be governor without Reid as a friend and role model.

“Sen. Reid has never forgotten who he is or where he came from,” Sisolak said. “He has spent his life and his career uplifting Nevada to what it has become today.”

Reid’s successor in the Senate, Catherine Cortez Masto, said her job was to build on his legacy.

“The first thing many visitors to this lively city will see now is Sen. Reid’s name over the gateway to Southern Nevada and its treasures,” she said in a prerecorded message.

Sen. Jacky Rosen said she has looked to Reid’s leadership during the Great Recession as a guide to Nevada’s emergence from the coronavirus pandemic.

Reid’s influence at the Capitol continues to be widely felt years after his retirement.

“The American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure law are exactly the kind of work that Sen. Reid paved the way for, the kind of work that helps people and builds communities,” Rosen said via video call from Washington.

The airport renaming will cost about $7 million, covered by private contributions. The county had received more than $4 million toward the rebranding as of October.

Naming and branding of airports are local decisions; the Federal Aviation Administration completes some administrative tasks — including revising air traffic control maps — before it recognizes any such changes.

The airport’s social media accounts had been changed before the morning ceremony. Although the address for the airport website is still www.mccarran.com, its branding is boldly Harry Reid International Airport.

Next up, the County Commission plans to amend airport references in county code from “McCarran” or “McCarran Airport” to “Harry Reid International Airport” when it meets Dec. 21.

The county’s renaming decision removes the longstanding name of late Nevadan and U.S. Sen. Pat McCarran — an aviation proponent but also a racist and antisemite. McCarran, also a Democrat, served in the Senate from 1933 until his death in 1954. The Las Vegas airport had featured his name since 1968.

The airport’s three-letter code, LAS, a key FAA identifier, will remain the same.

Segerblom said Nevada was home and host to a diverse, international population and its airport should represent all people as he said Reid did.

“Sen. McCarran, in retrospect, was not a perfect human being and said a lot of bad things, so to remove his name from what is now the multicultural center of the United States is very important,” Segerblom said. “We are not the Nevada that Sen. McCarran worked at or lived in.”

Sisolak said the county had been discussing renaming the airport for Reid since he was a commissioner himself.

Sisolak recounted that on one of his recent flights into Las Vegas, though before today’s ceremony, the pilot announced the aircraft’s descent toward “Harry Reid International.”

“I could not have been more proud.”