MGM Grand Air takes another pass at luxury, scheduled service.

MGM Grand Air's re-entry into scheduled, luxury service should succeed this time because of its ties to the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, said the president and chief executive officer of the Manhattan Beach-based carrier.

In addition, the carrier is reintroducing scheduled service at a time when the economy is better, the airline has new management and MGM Grand Air's existing charter business is stronger, said Robert Gould, the line's CEO.

"We have a totally different mission now and that is our link to the largest hotel in the world," said Gould, referring to the 5,000-room MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. "But there are several other differences now to what happened in the past. And all of those differences are going to help us succeed."

Last week, 7-year-old MGM Grand Air announced it would resume scheduled, luxury service with flights between Los Angeles, New York and Las Vegas.

The previous transcontinental scheduled flights between Los Angeles and New York, which featured two classes of luxury service, suffered in the early part of the decade because of the recession. Two years ago, the carrier halted scheduled service but kept charter flights using its six aircraft -- three DC-8s and three 727s.

In April 1993, Gould took over as president of the airline, a subsidiary of Las Vegas-based MGM Grand Inc., a publicly traded company controlled by Los Angeles investor Kirk Kerkorian. MGM Grand Inc. operates the MGM Grand Hotel Casino and Theme Park, which opened six months ago in Las Vegas.

Gould, formerly a president of now-defunct Eastern Airlines and a high-level executive with closed-down Pan American Airways, has been in the airline business for 30 years.

He succeeds Charles Demoney as president and CEO of MGM Grand. Demoney, according to company representatives, resigned in March 1993.

There are skeptics about whether Gould will succeed.

"I realize that things are different now" than they were when MGM Grand tried regularly scheduled flights before, said Isae Wada, the aviation editor at Travel Weekly, a travel-industry newspaper based in Secaucus, N.J. "But my question is whether the differences are enough to make it work this time."

She said there is a trend in the airline industry toward providing "niche" or specialized service. "There is a market there for first-class transcontinental service, but I wonder if MGM can sustain it," Wada said.

MGM Grand Air will use its same three 727s, each configured into 34 seats and four common rooms, to offer scheduled flights between Los Angeles, New York and Las Vegas starting Sept. 8. There will be two nonstop flights a day, except on Saturdays, in each direction between Los Angeles and New York. From Thursday through Sundays, there will be one New York-Los Angeles flight per day in each direction with a stop in Las Vegas.

Fares will be about equal to first-class tickets on other scheduled carriers, said Gould. Last week, first-class roundtrip fares between Los Angeles and New York were about $2,900. First-class roundtrip fares between Los Angeles and Las Vegas were $380 and between New York and Las Vegas, $2,100.

Gould said there will be a strong promotional and marketing link between the carrier and the MGM Grand hotel. Even on flights between New York and Los Angeles, passengers will be exposed to promotional material for the hotel. "We will do it in a very unobtrusive way," he said.

The carrier, he added, will also market itself to transcontinental passengers in the entertainment industry, large business groups and professionals, such as corporate attorneys and financial planners.

Gould noted that a key reason the scheduled service should succeed this time is that MGM Grand Air's charter business is stronger than it was two or three years ago. He said the growth of the charter business has exposed more potential new customers to the scheduled service, and has generally made the carrier stronger financially.

"We already have 40 percent of our 1995 charter booked," he said. Using the DC-8s, MGM Grand Air's luxury charter service includes work for entertainers on concert tours, sports teams, gambling junkets, around-the-world itineraries for deluxe tour operators and a marketing link to a cruise line.