Travelers through the Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (AAKIA) and Pemba Airport will have to dig deeper into their pockets from September 1, following the introduction of a ‘security charge’.
The Citizen learnt that the Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) has approved the new charges of $5 (about Tsh11, 500) for international passengers and $2 (about Tsh5,000) for domestic passengers, which will be incorporated into the air ticket fare.
“The introduction of security fees would develop a sustainable regular revenue stream to the ZAA (Zanzibar Airports Authority) for financing development and maintenance of world class security operations as per international standards,” says the document containing the proposed new fees.
“This will help to prevent acts of unlawful interference such as aircraft hijacking, sabotage of aircraft, bomb threats and hostage taking.”
This is geared towards building confidence of airport users of the high security levels.
According to the International Air Transport Association (Iata), Governments should ensure the security charge covers the cost of providing airport security services only and not the costs incurred for general/ national security services.
In September 2019 TCAA turned down a request by ZAA to charge a new security fee on airline tickets which would have made the cost of air travel more expensive.
The ZAA wanted to pass the cost of securing the airports to passengers who would have been slapped with $4 and $10 for domestic and international passengers, respectively.
Source: The Citizen