Increasing Passenger’s Facility Charges
Increasing Passenger’s Facility Charges (PFC) is a major problem to port congress in the united states ever since enacting the ACT of 1990. The ACT requires that PFC be increased from approximately two dollars to five dollars per passenger allowed to board the plane. There are different problems as a result of increasing the PFC. For instance, it will be costly for the passenger to pay as there are other charges that they are needed to cater for air travel apart from facility charges. These include international taxes and many others. Airport authorities are also confused because raising the facility charges will reduce the number of passengers leading to an insufficient amount of money to pay airport workers.
Increasing passenger’s facility chargers (PFC) became much complicated and tiresome enough. Increasing PFC is a major concern to both passenger and port operators. To passengers, increasing PFC negatively affects them. They still have charges like international departure tax, international arrival tax, domestic passenger ticket tax, domestic flight segment tax, among many other charges. To port operators, increasing passenger’s facility fees has a negative impact. It will automatically raise ticket fees leading to a lower turnout of passengers, leading to lost revenue, decreased salaries paid to employees, port maintenance fee, fuel, and operational cost.
Despite the need by the organization donors such as the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE) and Airport Council International-North America (ACI-NA), who are the organization’s supporters to increase the passenger’s facility fee, several problems still hinder the increase. The airport will lose many passengers. Who might not be able to pay additional fees required of them? A huge amount of money will be required to cater to the cost of infrastructure, which sums up to approximately one hundred and twenty dollars, against airline authorities who still feel that there is enough money to operate the activities of the organization. Their argument contradicts the need to raise the facility charges.
Significance of the problem.
Even though the organization’s donors require that passenger’s facility charges be raised, it will be of much significance to lower or keep the charges at its original level than to increase the fee. Setting airport charges at an affordable rate will help boost revenue since the number of passengers who board the plane will still be high. Due to an increase in the number of passengers at the airline, employees’ salaries will increase, motivating them to deliver a quality job. It helps in cash flow needed in the maintenance of the airport.
Alternative 1: The government of the United States (U.S) should set the airport charges to an affordable fee.
Advantage: This reduces ticket fees, raising the number of passengers on board, and increasing money in the store to help pay employees.
Disadvantage: This reduces the organization’s profit margin, making it much difficult to meet the target amount to run the organization.
Alternative 2: The government of the U.S should find a way of modernizing the airline and airport by ensuring that all equipment and technology employed are up to date.
Advantage: This helps in providing good equipment and delivering quality services to both passengers and airline operators.
Disadvantage: It is costly for the entire organization.
Recommendation
The donors need to concentrate on funding the organization or setting charges to an achievable fee to help the passengers heal from their experience in the year two thousand and eight. Most of them lost their economic stability, homes, and retirement savings.