Though her words might have been criticized for sounding callous during an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper earlier this week, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman wants to reopen the city and its numerous casinos - and she knows the numbers don't lie.
Numbers like this: Vegas' McCarran International Airport lost more than half its tourists arriving by plane last month, a drop of 2.3 million passengers compared to March of 2019 according to Ed Komenda of the Reno Gazette Journal.
That's a staggering number for any city, but for Las Vegas it's devastating. Perhaps more so than any other city in the U.S., Vegas is heavily reliant on tourism. In many respects, it is like a Caribbean island in that tourists drive the economy.
But dealing with the coronavirus the past three months has resulted in the city and its famous casinos being shut down - and, in turn, a global emergency for airlines that have lost more than 90 percent of passenger capacity due to lowered demand for travel.
According to the newspaper, Southwest Airlines, the most dominant carrier at McCarran, serviced 1.6 million Las Vegas travelers in March 2019. That number plummeted to 606,650 last month.
In early April, McCarran shut down all gates at two concourses, and the Department of Aviation also reduced its on-site workforce.
"As passenger activity has declined," airport officials said in a statement, "McCarran officials are continually evaluating the airport's infrastructure and operations to identify ways to maximize efficiencies and implement cost-savings measures."
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