With eye on future foreign flights, Las Vegas airport to double international gates

Airport officials say they're doubling the number of international gates in Las Vegas with the expectation that foreign travel to the destination will climb.

McCarran International Airport director Rosemary Vassiliadis told a governor-appointed panel looking at southern Nevada tourism issues Thursday that construction to convert part of an existing link between its D concourse and one of its two terminals into seven additional international gates would begin later this year.

Among the new gates will be one to accommodate a wide-body double-decker A-380 aircraft.

The president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has also made it a goal to increase international travel, including a possible program directed specifically at boosting Chinese travel. There are no direct flights to Las Vegas from Japan and China.