Airlines get fee relief; passengers to pay

U.S. airlines, which lobbied to stop passenger security fees from being raised under a congressional budget deal, won the repeal of a separate $380 million charge they pay each year.

The Aviation Security Infrastructure Fee is to be repealed on Oct. 1, according to a summary of the deal released by the House Rules Committee Wednesday.

Airlines have paid that fee to help finance airport security since the Transportation Security Administration was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The agency was allowed to charge carriers annual fees equal to the costs they paid for passenger and baggage screening in 2000.

Airlines paid $380.2 million in fiscal 2012, according to Transportation Security Administration data.

The fee paid by the carriers is separate from the Transportation Security Administration security charge paid by passengers on airline tickets. That fee rises under the budget deal to $5.60 each way of a trip, up from $ 2.50 per flight segment or a maximum of $5 each way. Both fees help cover some costs of running the security agency.

Increasing the passenger fee was one of the few money raisers that both political parties supported in budget negotiations. Airlines and other parts of the aviation industry, such as the Air Line Pilots Association union, lobbied against it, saying higher ticket prices would discourage consumers from traveling.

“Airfares are going to go up for consumers,” Delta Air Lines Inc. Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson said at the company’s annual investor day in New York today before the House Rules summary was published.

“That tax increase will not be absorbed by Delta,” Anderson said. “It’s a tax increase. Let’s call it what it is, not some service-fee fiction.”

Separately, the budget accord would block the Transportation Security Administration from forcing airports to assume responsibility for monitoring exits from secure areas, according to the House summary.

The security agency proposed shifting the staffing and funding of exit-lane monitoring in a cost-cutting move earlier this year. The policy was set to begin in January.

Bloomberg News/RON ANTONELLI Delta Air Lines jets sit on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport in New York in October. Under a proposed congressional budget deal, airlines will be spared a $380 million charge they pay each year to the government, but the security fee charged on tickets...