The government is mulling raising the airport service charge that travelers leaving the country pay by about 67 percent and dividing the money more evenly between the Tourism Bureau and the nation’s international airports.
The current airport service charge is NT$300 (US$10) per person. According to the Act of the Department of Tourism (觀光發展條例), 60 percent of the revenue earned is used to develop tourism and 40 percent is used to expand and revamp airport facilities.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ (MOTC) Department of Navigation and Aviation said it has proposed raising the charge to NT$500 per person and dividing the revenue equally between the bureau and airports serving outbound passengers, including Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport), Kaohisung International Airport and Taichung Airport.
Paul Yang (楊博文), a senior engineer with the department, said the airport service charge had not been adjusted since 1987.
“Aside from expanding current facilities at airports, the government is investing in some major projects, including building Terminal Three and a third runway at the Taoyuan airport as well as other facilities for the Taoyuan Aerotropolis Project,” Yang said.
“While the government will appropriate funds for these projects, the airport company is expected to raise part of the money on its own,” he said.
The department said it had taken into consideration the potential public response to raising the charge, adding that NT$500 is still less than the fees set by other top-tier airports around the world.
“The plans to build Terminal Three, the third runway and other facilities that are part of the Taoyuan Aerotropolis Project require a budget of approximately NT$249.5 billion. Raising the service charge could help fund those constructions,” Yang said.
The proposal to increase the service charge received preliminary approval from the Executive Yuan’s Tourism Development and Promotion Committee, but the ministry still needs to complete several procedures before submitting the proposal to the Executive Yuan for final approval, he said.
The department has estimated that raising the service charge to NT$500 would increase the revenue accrued from the charge from NT$42 billion annually to NT$70 billion.
The proposal to raise the service charge has drawn a mixed response from netizens. One woman, called Jessie Chen, said NT$500 is relatively inexpensive compared to the fees at other airports around the world.
Another netizen, named Joy Tsai, wrote that the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport was the least deserving of a fee increase.
“Water leaks and flooding are reported constantly at the airport, rain or shine, and it wants to talk about raising the fee,” Tsai wrote.
Government statistics show the nation’s airports handle about 14.12 million passengers a year, including those heading abroad.
The Taoyuan airport’s portion of the service charge revenue would increase from NT$4.9 billion to NT$14.5 billion over the next eight years.
The Hong Kong International Airport’s airport service charge is equal to NT$676, while South Korea’s Incheon International Airport charges NT$761, Narita International Airport in Japan charges NT$721 and Singapore Changi Airport and Beijing Capital International Airport charge NT$800.
The charges in Frankfurt, Los Angeles, London and Johannesburg respectively are NT$1,116, NT$1,890, NT$2,020 and NT$886.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching