Drafted — not technically validated
Record revision 1 · Las Vegas's airport, McCarran until 2021, with four runways and the Janet terminal for flights to the test sites.
A real-world airfield as described in public sources, and how sim maps represent it. Units, facilities and names change; each is dated where the sources allow, and the charts are not for navigation. Use current official publications for flight planning.
Location and identity
- Country or territory
- United States
- Coordinates
- 36.0803° N, 115.1524° W [2]
- Elevation
- 2,183 ft (665 m) [2]
- Identifiers
- ICAO KLAS · IATA LAS · FAA LAS
- Other names
- Opened
- January 1943, as Alamo Field, a general aviation field built by flight instructor George Crockett [1]
- Theatre
- North America
Role and operators
- Status
- Active · Civil
- Roles today
- Civil airport
Units
Permanently based units belong to the airfield; rotational and temporarily deployed units are there for a period or an operation. Dates are when the sources place each unit there; "as of" is when a source described it as current.
Current
Janet Air flights to military test sites, from a dedicated terminal building [1]
- Service
- United States, government (non-military)
- Basing
- Permanently based
- When
- as of Oct 2026
Runways and facilities
From data effective Oct 2026. Facilities not listed here are not documented in the sources cited, which does not mean the airfield lacks them.
| Runway | Length | Width | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| 08L/26R [1] [2]runway 08L has a 2,461 ft displaced threshold and 26R one of 1,404 ft | 14,835 ft (4,522 m) | 150 ft (46 m) | concrete |
| 08R/26L [2] | 10,526 ft (3,208 m) | 150 ft (46 m) | concrete |
| 01L/19R [2] | 9,770 ft (2,978 m) | 150 ft (46 m) | concrete |
| 01R/19L [2] | 9,769 ft (2,978 m) | 150 ft (46 m) | concrete |
- Arresting gear
- None documented in the sources cited
- Navaids
Figure 1 — Airfield map of Harry Reid International Airport (to scale)
- Runway
- Taxiway, with its name
- Apron
- Hangar or terminal
- Helipad
- Airfield boundary
Runways, taxiways, aprons and buildings inside the airfield boundary, true north up, drawn from OpenStreetMap data retrieved 2026-11-01. Widths come from the map data or, where it gives none, a typical 45 m runway and 18 m taxiway. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the ODbL 1.0. Community-mapped, not an official aerodrome chart, and not for navigation.
Sim maps
Represented in: DCS: Nevada Test and Training Range
DCS: Nevada Test and Training Range DCS World · Present day
Represented as “McCarran International” · checked 2026-11-01 [3]
- Named by the airport's pre-2021 name, McCarran International [3]
- Runways 07L/25R and 07R/25L [3]
- Tower 119.9 MHz VHF and 257.8 MHz UHF [3], the frequencies the FAA lists for the east–west runways [2]
- VORTAC LAS on channel 116X (116.9 MHz), and an ILS (I-LAS, 110.3 MHz) to runway 25R [3]
Differences from the real airfield
Only the maps marked represented or confirmed absent have been checked. Any other map may or may not represent this airfield.
Role today
Harry Reid International is the airport of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Valley, owned by Clark County and run by its Department of Aviation. [1] More than 58.4 million passengers used it in 2024, and it is an operating base for Allegiant Air, Frontier Airlines, JSX and Southwest Airlines. [1] Janet Air flights to secret military sites leave from their own terminal building here. [1]
History
Flight instructor George Crockett built Alamo Field on the site in 1942, and it opened in January 1943 with three gravel runways; at the time the airlines used the Las Vegas Army Airfield, now Nellis Air Force BaseNellis Air Force Base AirfieldThe Air Force's centre for advanced combat training: home of the Weapons School, Red Flag and the Thunderbirds, outside Las Vegas.. [1] When the military wanted that base back for the Cold War, Clark County bought Crockett’s field, and it reopened as McCarran Field on 19 December 1948, named for Senator Pat McCarran. [1] Traffic grew with the Las Vegas casinos, from 36,000 passengers in 1948 to nearly a million in 1959; a new terminal opened in 1963 and Terminal 3 in 2012. [1] The county renamed the airport for Senator Harry Reid in December 2021. [1]
The airfield
Four runways in two parallel pairs: 08L/26R, 14,835 ft long, and 08R/26L, 10,526 ft, running east–west, and 01L/19R and 01R/19L, about 9,770 ft each, running north–south. [2] The FAA warns of sun glare reflected from glass hotels north-west of the airport and of large numbers of birds and bats around the field between sunset and sunrise. [2]
Sources
- Harry Reid International Airport. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reid_International_Airport (accessed 2026-11-01).
- Airport data: LAS (KLAS), Harry Reid Intl. Federal Aviation Administration, Aeronautical Information Services, data effective 29 October – 26 November 2026. https://nfdc.faa.gov/nfdcApps/services/ajv5/airportDisplay.jsp?airportId=LAS (accessed 2026-11-01).
- dcs-world-schema reference data: Nevada airbases (McCarran International.json). dcs-world-schema, open-source data extracted by running DCS World 2.9.30.28536. https://github.com/YoloWingPixie/dcs-world-schema/blob/c3091e6c08fb8167e26145d0e33c10e4140c6fe7/dcs-world-reference/latest/airbases/Nevada/McCarran%20International.json (accessed 2026-11-01). With its beacon files, as tabled on the DCS: Nevada map page.
Wikipedia articles are secondary sources and can change; they are cited with the date they were read. FAA airport data and diagrams are official but are reissued every 28 or 56 days; each is cited with the edition read. pydcs mirrors the DCS terrain data at the commit linked.