As a member of the staff at another airport Southwest serves I can understand the dismay people feel for a runway closure at LAS. An airport does not take the option to close a runway lightly. The operational impact increases the workload of the employees of the airlines, FAA, and airport authority. I don't know the makeup of the runways at LAS but in general runways in the southwest are concrete where in the north they are asphalt. Concrete takes days to cure where asphalt can be reopened hours after being applied. However due to the high tempetures in LAS asphalt would be too soft to use in the summer. I am sure LAS staff and the FAA took a long hard look at what this would do the traffic at the airport. However sometimes work on our infrastructure needs to be done. From an airport management standpoint I prefer to rebuild a runway just by closing it. However due to the demand and air traffic where I work we do work in phases from 11PM to 6AM.. This keeps the traffic disruptions down but increases the costs. We can do this because we use asphalt and VERY expensive quick harding concrete for our electrical fixtures.
I am sure the people at LAS, airline, airport and FAA are working very hard to keep up with their construction schedule and get this runway back open ASAP.
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