Air travel to Zanzibar to cost more with new security fees
What you need to know:
The fee to be charged from embarking passengers only, would enable the Zanzibar Airports Authority (ZAA) to fill the security gap in 17 years followed by continuous maintenance, repair, training and replacement of outdated and absolute equipment after the forecasted period
Dar es Salaam. Travelers through the Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (AAKIA) and Pemba airport will with effect from September 1 have to dig deeper into their pockets following the introduction of a new charge dubbed ‘security charge’.
Yesterday, The Citizen learnt that Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) had already approved the new charges of $5 (about Sh11, 500) for international passengers and Sh5,000 for domestic ones which has to be incorporated into the air ticket fare.
The fee to be charged to embarking passengers only, would enable the Zanzibar Airports Authority (ZAA) to fill the security gap in 17 years followed by continuous maintenance, repair, training and replacement of outdated and absolute equipment after the forecasted period.
This is according to the proposal document for the introduction of security fees at the two airports which was submitted to TCAA in April 2018.
“The introduction of secu-rity fees would develop a sustainable regular revenue stream to the ZAA for financ-ing development and maintenance of world class security operations as per international standards,” reads the document.
It adds: “This will help to prevent acts of unlawful interference such as aircraft hijacking, sabotage of aircraft, bomb threats and hostage taking.”
This would also enable air-line and cargo operators to conduct their operations via the airport in a safe, secure and profitable manner.
“All this is geared to build confidence in operators and airlines to use the airports due to higher security levels compliant with International Civil Aviation Organisation (Icao) Annex 17 requirements,” is says .
The position of the International Air Transport Association (Iata) on security charges is that: Governments should ensure that the charge when introduced should recover 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 authority (ZAA) wanted to pass the cost of securing the facilities at AAKIA and Pemba airports to passengers who would have been slapped with Sh10,000 and $10 (Sh23,000) per domestic passengers and international ones respectively.
