LAS

Harry Reid International (LAS) runs on convention and leisure logic, not on business-hub logic. That inverts most of the rules that work at ATL or ORD. Fridays 3-8 PM and Sundays 12-6 PM are the two most crushing windows of the week — this is when weekend-warriors book both directions, and TSA can hit 45-minute waits even with PreCheck. Mondays and Tuesdays, by contrast, are among the calmest hub days you'll experience in the US.

Terminal 1 (domestic mainline) and Terminal 3 (international + some domestic) operate almost independently. Terminal 3's security is chronically faster in the mornings because most of Vegas's leisure traffic funnels through T1. If you have any choice between airlines that operate from both, T3 is the smarter pick during peak weekend hours.

The genuinely unusual LAS quirk: 2-4 AM is a real, non-trivial traffic window. Vegas is one of the only US airports where 3 AM departures happen at scale — mostly to serve early East Coast morning arrivals. If your flight is at 5 AM and you assume the airport will be empty at 3 AM when you arrive, you'll be surprised.

The Las Vegas Monorail doesn't connect to the airport — a chronic tourist confusion. The airport is accessed by rideshare, taxi, or the RTC bus. Uber/Lyft has a dedicated pickup zone on Level 2M of the parking garage; from the Strip in normal traffic, allow 20 minutes and don't trust the ride-share ETA during convention weeks.