The price of that $59 trip to Phoenix goes up in three weeks.
But so does the price of every other ticket issued for flights departing Salt Lake International Airport, thanks to an airport authority decision this summer to start collecting $3 a pop from almost every traveler.The fee goes into effect Dec. 1, and mirrors a nationwide trend toward imposing a "passenger facility charge," otherwise known as a PFC, to pay for airport improve-ments.
"There's about 200 other airports that do it," said Sam Saeva, the Salt Lake Airport Authority's director of finance and administration. "Most of them - like us - have gone with three dollars."
Saeva said airport officials don't like calling it a tax.
"It's a facility-use fee," he said.
Every commercial ticket originating in Salt Lake City will show the $3 as a charge in addition to base fare. The fee will remain in place for three years and four months, long enough to raise about $66 million precisely targeted for about a dozen projects.
Money raised will include:
- About $20 million for completion of the airport's third carrier runway, a 12,000-foot project on the west side of the airport whose taxiways will cross above 4000 West. Construction began in early 1993 and is scheduled to finish in December 1995.
- $13.5 million for a new international passenger terminal that probably won't be as well-used as was originally hoped. The terminal, which will also serve as Salt Lake facilities for St. George-based SkyWest, will house federal Customs and Immigration and Naturalization Services, handling flights from abroad. Slated to open in January, the terminal was designed partly in anticipation of Salt Lake City's landing a London route, which the FAA awarded to Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
- $11 million for carwash-style aircraft de-icing facilities.
- Almost $11 million for equipment and runway improvements that will include a complex system of stop-and-go taxiway "wig-wag" lights, snow-removal machinery, airfield restriping, and - the biggest expense in this category - installation of low-visibility landing systems that will allow planes to fly with just 300 feet of visibility.
Though most air travelers will pay the charge, exemptions come into play for those on multiple-connection flights. Under Federal Aviation Administration guidelines, passengers don't have to pay such fees more than twice on any round trip.
Airlines will get to keep 8 cents of every $3 to pay for the cost of collecting the fee, though they will make money doing so because regu-la-tions let them hang on to the fees for a certain amount of "float time," earning interest between the moment of collection and the time they turn the fees over to the airport.
Salt Lake City's airport this year will set a record by boarding about 9 million people.