Las Vegas Airport

Flew in and out of Las Vegas International w/c 5th March. Arrivals hall quick and efficient and baggage reclaim was very smooth. However for International departures the Lounge is limited with few places to eat (two fast food establishments) one newsagent and one duty free shop (quite small). Although clean for an International Lounge it is not a patch on any of the London Airports nor Orlando or other US Airports I have visited. It is not the sort of place you want to wait for three hours for your flight. If possible leave your Hotel as late as possible as the airport is only 15/20 minutes from the middle of the strip.

I have used LAS extensively over the past 2 years I must say the domestic terminal especially the baggage reclaim is terrible I arrived there twice in July 05 and spent well over an hour waiting for my baggage. The international terminal is much better in many respects although the eating and drinking facilities are limited it has a modern and cleaner feel. Also I have arrived there twice and have never had the problem with baggage reclaim.

Very smart modern airport with the only hassle been all the gaming machines in the way everywhere. I saw one of the gaming attendants have a go at a parent for letting his daughter "loiter" near the machines which was "against Nevada law". She was only sitting on a case not even noticing the machines. This airport needs to remember it's an airport not a casino. If they want machines zone them off with entry control and put some seating where the bandits were.

Flew into LAS over Christmas 2005. I was still able to get through all the craziness of the place on Dec 23 without much hassle. Flew in on Southwest into terminal 1 at the C-gates. As soon as you get out the jetway there are slot machines in the waiting area. I found this to be somewhat of a hassle to walk around all the folks gambling when I wanted to get out the airport. Smoking lounges were fairly spaced out throughout the concourse and they were filled with thick smoke all in the rooms. Finding the train to the main terminal was a little hard fo find over those darn slot machines. Have to pay attention to the signs very carefully or you can miss the trains. The baggage claim was overly congested but remember this was Dec 23. Getting to the rental cars was a short ride to the section of the airport behind the terminals and parking garage. At least they are not off site like so many other airports. Overall the airport is a nice size with a decent amount of places to eat and shop. Ample amount of security gates for all the gates. Just make sure you plan enough time to get though ticketing if you not flying with an e-ticket. Another good thing is that the airport is at the south end of the strip.

We flew into Vegas from San Francisco with United Airlines. After a 3 night stay we were then due to fly onto LA. What a fiasco at LAS airport! We arrived 2.5 hours before we were due to take off. We queued for 40 mins only to be told when we got to the desk that we had to check in at another desk as we had '4 S's' on our check-in card. We then queued for another 1.5 and endeavoured to get help from a staff member (who were extremely rude and uncaring). Basically we had half an hour to get through a vigorous security check (due to having 4S's on our boarding cards). No matter how many times we told them at our flight was due they just made us hang around. We had to run to the departure gate after hearing our names being called numerous times. Not one apology was received and the staff just seemed intent on making life difficult. Believe me we're in no hurry to return to the States!

My first visit to Las Vegas was to London Gatwick departing from the international departures lounge which was very basic. A few seats some small shops and that was all. The second visit was from LAX so I arrived into the domestic lounge which I can only say is 100% better than the international lounge. There was lots of places to eat and sit. However the third time I visited LAS I got to depart from the domestic lounge and found it hard to find decent food. The only place that looked decent had a massive long queue with staff that didn't seem to realise that people are on a time constraint to catch flights. Overall though one of the best airports I've been to for cleanliness and space.

Restaurants are the Worst! In the past year I had the misfortune of using the terminal which houses Southwest. The variety of restaurants their layout lack of seating as compared to many other U.S. and foreign airports leave much to be desired. There's little variety; no top notch dinner restaurant. And the prices leave much to be desired. Why shouldn't the public have access to a great variety of restaurant's where you may want to come back? Why do we have to pay 30 to 40% more for the privilege of dining there?