Mike Van de Ven, executive vice president and chief of operations for the airline, said Southwest has begun planning for the crew base, which is expected to open by next fall.

A crew base is the origination and completion site of a flight crew's trip. While nearly half of the airline's flight crews commute to their bases for the start of any trip, most prefer to live in a base city.

Typically, crew members bid for trips of two, three and four days at a time, start from a base and complete that trip at the same base.

Las Vegas will be Southwest's eighth crew base when it opens sometime between September and November 2007. The airline currently has crew bases in Dallas; Houston; Chicago; Baltimore; Phoenix; Oakland, Calif.; and Orlando, Fla.

"We've been growing every year and we love Las Vegas," Van de Ven said. "It makes sense for us to have a crew base in Las Vegas because it is our busiest airport in terms of daily departures."

Van de Ven said a Las Vegas crew base would enable the airline, which has more than 3,100 daily flights systemwide and 32,000 employees, more flexibility in scheduling.

Southwest currently has 844 Las Vegas-based employees, including 697 in ground operations, 79 in maintenance and 67 in provisioning.

Van de Ven said adding a crew base would likely result in the addition of 350 pilots and first officers and 600 flight attendants making Las Vegas their home.

At full capacity, the Las Vegas crew base could accommodate 600 pilots and first officers and 1,000 flight attendants.

Pilots are the highest paid employees of the airline, with a first-year captain making between $172,000 and $200,000 a year. First-year flight attendants make between $27,000 and $28,000 a year at Southwest.

Van de Ven said in the next nine to 12 months, Southwest will build administrative offices, a computer room and other base facilities in 17,000 square feet it already leases at McCarran.

"It'll be like a large airport lobby," Van de Ven said.

He said the long lead time for preparing for the base also would give employees and their families plenty of time to make the move to Las Vegas.