Posted on: Wednesday, January 2, 2002

Security fees to add up to $10 to airfares

By Rip Watson
Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON — U.S. air travelers will begin paying a security fee of as much $10 a trip in February to help pay for increased baggage and passenger screening after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Department of Transportation said.

The fee applies to tickets sold on or after Feb. 1 and is $2.50 per flight boarded, with a $5 maximum for one-way travel and $10 for a round trip. The charges, set in a November law, apply to flights to domestic and foreign destinations that begin at U.S. airports.

The DOT said its expects to collect about $900 million this fiscal year, which runs through September.

The department's new Transportation Security Administration was required to write rules for collecting the fees, which were set as part of an air-security bill signed Nov. 19 by President Bush.

The law replaces a system under which airlines arrang-ed and paid for airport security. The law also requires additional baggage inspections starting next month and the hiring and training of 28,000 security screeners within a year.

Frequent fliers traveling on free tickets also will have to pay the fee, the Transportation Department said.

The agency's notice published in today's Federal Register said the money collected through the fees won't be enough to meet estimated security costs of at least $1 billion. The fees are the maximum allowed by the law. Separate rules will be published later for collection of additional security fees to make up the difference, the notice said.

Airlines will start sending money collected for the fees to the DOT unit on March 31.