Dip in Las Vegas tourism traced to Spirit bankruptcy, Canadians' pullback

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

Spirit Airlines’ closure in May caused a dip in air travel to Las Vegas, an expert told the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority Board on Tuesday.

Air travel to Las Vegas fell 8% domestically and more than 13% internationally in fiscal year 2026 — a decline driven almost entirely by the loss of Spirit Airlines and a pullback in Canadian travel, said Joel Van Over, senior director of Ailevon Pacific Aviation Consulting.

Harry Reid International Airport served more than 4.2 million passengers in June, continuing a year-over-year downward trend driven by Spirit’s closure and a softer tourism market compared with previous years. In May, it served 4,570,647 passengers, down 8.4% from May 2025.

Spirit Airlines, which was one of the Las Vegas airport’s biggest carriers with service to 16 markets, halted operations May 2.

Once valued at roughly $5.5 billion, the airline collapsed under bankruptcy filings, mounting debt and a spike in jet fuel prices.

“This was a significant hit to Las Vegas. At one point, they were your second-largest airline bringing seats into Las Vegas,” Van Over said.

His presentation included a slide titled “Spirit’s collapse and Canadian pullback have driven 100% of our capacity decreases.”

In fiscal year 2023, Spirit accounted for 5.3 million of Las Vegas’ 32 million inbound domestic seats, Van Over told the board. In fiscal year 2026, inbound flights totaled 29 million seats.

“If you would have just been able to hold Spirit in place year over year, we would have been exactly where we were last year,” Van Over said.

Spirit slowly wound down operations starting in 2025, giving Las Vegas time to react. All 16 other markets it served were covered by at least one other carrier.

Las Vegas backfilled more than 50% of Spirit’s former capacity with other airlines. Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air — whose business model is built around affordable, no-frills vacations — was quick to fill extra seats, launching a special offer for displaced Spirit customers that temporarily held fares steady on overlapping routes.

Beyond backfilling, 11 domestic and six international airlines have added 32 markets to Las Vegas in the past six months, bringing in an additional 1.1 million seats annually, Van Over said.

Fixing the sluggish visitation rate from Canada won’t be as easy.

Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency in January 2025, his tariff fights with, immigration policies toward and repeated remarks about Canada have coincided with a drop in Canadian travel to the United States and, by extension, Las Vegas. 

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said Canadian arrivals fell 17.4% in 2025, a loss of 252,400 visitors that brought the total to 1,196,300. Overall visitation dropped 7.5% in 2025 to about 38.5 million, the lowest level since 2021, while international visitors fell 4.8% to 4,726,500.

“This is huge. We don’t ever see one sector — one international region of travel — evaporate as it has,” Van Over said.

In response to the fall in consumer demand, Canadian airlines shifted their assets away from the United States, resulting in a 292,000-seat capacity loss for Las Vegas, Van Over said.

To make up for the decrease in foreign visitation, Van Over said tourism officials here have been working to gain other markets. Recently, Las Vegas began direct flights to Paris through Air France, and direct flights to Australia are scheduled to begin in December.

As a result, Van Over said international capacity will be up 3% from July through December.

“We’re beginning that rebound and that recovery,” Van Over said.