Las Vegas Layover Inside Harry Reid Airport
Part of the full Las Vegas Layover: Walking the Strip From LAS
A Cessna that stayed airborne for 64 days without landing hangs over the baggage claim at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, with a free aviation museum on the floor directly above it and 1,430 slot machines spread through the terminals.
The free aviation museum on Level 2 of Terminal 1
The aircraft over the carousels is a 1958 Cessna 172, and between 4 December 1958 and 23 January 1959 it flew for 64 days, 22 hours and 19 minutes without touching the ground. Robert Timm and John Cook took turns at the controls while the other slept, refuelling from a truck racing along a desert road with a hose, and the Hacienda hotel paid for all of it in exchange for its name painted down both sides of the fuselage. Nobody has beaten the record since.
The Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum owns it, and its main exhibit is one floor up, above baggage claim, covering southern Nevada aviation from 1920 into the jet era. Clark County runs it, admission is free, and the exhibits are listed as open 24 hours a day, every day, which is the useful part on a 5am connection. Look for the red 1956 Ford Thunderbird convertible: it worked here as the airport’s crash wagon from 1957 until 1968. More display cases sit at ticketing, out at the D gates and along the moving walkway to the C gates, but those are past the checkpoint and need a boarding pass.
1,430 slot machines spread through the terminals
Nevada permits gaming in the passenger terminals, so the machines start at the gate and carry on all the way down to the pavement outside baggage claim. There are 1,430 of them here, more than at any other airport in the world; the only other American airport with any at all is Reno-Tahoe, with 240.
They have returned more than a billion dollars to Clark County since they were installed, which is the clearest available statement of how the arithmetic runs. Industry estimates put airport machines a few percentage points below what a Strip floor pays back, on the reasoning that everyone playing one is leaving town within the hour and will not be comparing notes. The under-21 rule is the one worth knowing in advance: Nevada bars anyone below that age from playing a machine or loitering by one, and here the machines are out in open concourse space rather than behind a casino door.
Concourse D and the three airside trams
Concourse D is a satellite building with no walkway to anything, so every passenger using it arrives by tram. Three lines run: green from Terminal 1 out to Concourse C, blue from Terminal 1 to Concourse D, and red from Terminal 3 to Concourse D, all of them airside and all of them a few minutes end to end.
That matters for a connection because the two terminals are not connected past security at all. Terminal 1 holds concourses A, B and C, Terminal 3 holds the E gates and international arrivals, and D is shared between them; if your two flights are in different terminals you leave the secure area, ride the free landside shuttle from Level Zero and screen again on the far side. Coming in on an international flight, you clear customs at D through a dedicated tunnel, so budget for that on top.
Shark Reef at the south end of Las Vegas Boulevard
Mandalay Bay is the closest of the Strip resorts to the airport, roughly two miles up the boulevard, which makes its aquarium the one attraction here that a four- or five-hour connection can genuinely reach and return from. Shark Reef is built around a 1.3-million-gallon tank staged as a sunken shipwreck, with a walk-through tunnel under it, more than 2,000 animals in the building and over a hundred sharks.
It opens 10am to 8pm and an adult ticket is $29, sold as a timed entry, so picking a slot before you set off is what stops the whole trip hinging on whichever entry time is left when you walk up. Anything further north on the boulevard, the fountains, the wheel, the canal, wants a longer gap than a connection usually gives; that is what the main Las Vegas guide is built around.
Leaving the terminal is the part this airport makes awkward, though. It runs no baggage storage of its own, the old lockers went out under security rules and never came back, and an airline desk will only take a suitcase within a few hours of that airline’s own departure.
Two hours in this building is a strange amount of time: too long for the gate, too short for the city, and long enough that the difference between having a bag with you and not having one shows up in every decision you make about it.
Frequently asked questions
Are the aviation museum exhibits past security or before it?
Both, and the best of them are before it. The main exhibit sits on Level 2 of Terminal 1, directly above baggage claim, which is landside: anyone can walk up to it without a boarding pass, including someone who has just landed and is waiting for a lift. The Cessna hanging over the carousels is landside too. Further displays are scattered at ticketing, out at the D gates and along the moving walkway to the C gates, and those need a boarding pass because they are past the checkpoint. Clark County, which runs the museum, lists the exhibits as open 24 hours a day, every day.
How long a connection do you need to leave Harry Reid airport and come back?
Four hours is the honest floor, and five is comfortable. The airport is about four miles from the Strip, which is 10 to 15 minutes by road each way outside the afternoon peak, but leaving means clearing security again on the way back, and the terminal has nowhere to leave a suitcase while you are gone. If you are under four hours, the aviation museum, the concourses and the food are what you have; if you are well over it, the full Las Vegas guide covers what is worth the trip into town.
Are the slot machines at Harry Reid airport worth playing?
Not on the numbers. There are 1,430 of them across the terminals, more than any other airport in the world, and they have paid Clark County over a billion dollars since they went in, which tells you which side of the transaction they favour. Industry estimates consistently put airport machines several percentage points below what a Strip casino floor returns, and the reason given is that the people playing them are a captive audience who will not be back tomorrow. Treat a few dollars in one as the souvenir it is rather than a plan.
Is Harry Reid airport a reasonable place to wait with children?
For a short wait, yes, and the aviation museum is the reason: the Cessna over the carousels and the Level 2 exhibits above them cost nothing, need no boarding pass and include a red 1956 Ford Thunderbird that worked here as a crash wagon until 1968. The gaming areas are the opposite, since Nevada law bars anyone under 21 from playing a slot machine or loitering around one, and the machines sit in open concourse space rather than behind a door. If the connection is long enough to leave, Shark Reef charges $24 for ages 5 to 12 and nothing at all under 5.