Airport Fees Boost Travel Costs Hidden Expenses Help Airports To Finance Expensive Improvements

They’ve got you coming and going.

In hidden but growing expenses that seems destined to raise the cost of flying, airports are increasing fees and imposing surcharges to help defray their costs.

Some of these fees are paid by the airlines themselves. But like merchants hit up for more rent or taxes, the airlines are likely to convey the added financial burden to their customers.

“Sooner or later, somewhere down the line, the purchaser pays, however many times it’s removed,” said Chris Privett, a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents.

The cost of the direct airport fees represents about 5 percent of the airlines’ overall expenses, a slight increase from a decade ago, said Barney Parrella, a spokesman for the Airports Council International-North America, a trade group.

But the size of these fee increases at some airports has far outpaced the overall rate of inflation. At Los Angeles International Airport, for example, fees have tripled since 1993, even with a government-ordered partial rollback.

Sure, it’s more pleasant to travel through a dazzling airport with plush lounges and high-tech moving walkways. Renovations from San Francisco to Charlotte, N.C., have expanded the gates, repaved the tarmac, brightened the lights and made the terminals resemble chic shopping malls.

The trouble is, someone has to pay for it. Most commercial airports are self-supporting and don’t directly receive general tax revenue. Enter the world of airport fees, a hodgepodge of charges collected from airlines, other airport tenants, and the passengers themselves.

This world is hard to untangle, even among aviation industry experts. For instance, some of the nation’s 420 commercial airports charge airlines a fee for each landing. A few charge instead for each takeoff.

They base fees on criteria such as plane weight and size, but each has a different formula. Moreover, the fees can pay for a range of expenses that make it difficult to know which fee pays for what.

Newark, N.J.,’s airport recently upped the fee it charges passenger airlines by 25 percent, to $4 per 1,000 pounds of aircraft weight. That’s in addition to a $3 surcharge the Federal Aviation Administration has allowed the airport to collect from every passenger since 1992.

Both the fee and surcharge come atop a 10 percent tax on domestic plane tickets the federal government had been collecting until it lapsed with the the budget impasse in January.

The ticket tax, which pays for improvements to the air traffic control system and provides grants to airports, is certain to be collected again.

Besides takeoff and landing fees, more than half of all U.S. airports impose a passenger surcharge, collected by the airline as an add-on to the ticket price, Parrella said.

In use since 1992, each surcharge, called a passenger facility charge or PFC, must be spent on a specific capital improvement project approved by the FAA. No passenger can be charged more than $12 in surcharges per round-trip.

Travelers, even under the best circumstances, can expect costs to keep going up as the number of people traveling through aging airports continues to rise.

Parrella said his group expects that airports will need $10 billion a year each year for the next five years in order to keep up, about double what all sources bring in now.

“The capital needs for the airport system, for as far out as we can measure, are going to be enormous,” Parrella said.