Being in Las Vegas can be a blast. Getting to Las Vegas, well, that’s another story, especially if you call the Coachella Valley home.
Whether your route of choice is The 15 Freeway or the back way through Amboy, you are looking at between three and four hours traveling from Palm Springs to Las Vegas, though you do get to stop at Eddie World along the way for a 3-D printed gummy bear.
Flying to Las Vegas would be a great alternative, but as the Desert Sun notes, that hasn’t been an option for years.
If you remember flying nonstop from PSP to Vegas, you are not wrong. United Airlines offered these flights for almost a decade but discontinued its services in the fall of 2014 due to the fact that “the route was not meeting their expectations,” PSP Executive Director Thomas Nolan said.
The airline operated the service with a small, 30-seat propeller aircraft which has mostly phased out of their fleet, Nolan explained.
You could, if you are a crazy person, still book a flight from Palm Springs to Vegas – though it would have a connection in Ontario or even San Francisco and, well, taking an 8-hour trip to Las Vegas seems not wise.
Officials point out to the Desert Sun that the same percentage of people came to the Coachella Valley from Nevada as New York in 2015 – which makes sense as its closer and less expensive to travel between the states.
It would seem to make some sense to push flights to and from Nevada – however those in charge seem more inclined to spend loads of cash on odd marketing campaigns to lure New Yorkers to fly across the country than to push to create a route between Palm Springs and Las Vegas.
Earlier this summer, the vacation bureau people teamed up with the Palm Springs International Airport asking locals to take a pledge to fly out of the local airport instead of LAX or Ontario – as they apparently think that all of us are driving hours in traffic to then fly out of a more congested airport because we thought it was fun or something.
But hey, here’s a thought: How about another pledge for snow birds where they allow their flight to make a stop in Las Vegas on their back to Vancouver? It would give us locals a chance to fly to Vegas directly and would really be a nice gesture on their part for all those months spent driving down Highway 111 at 25 mph.
