Travelers have many complaints about air travel in the United States these days: crowded airports, slow security lines, subpar and expensive food. When added to rising ticket prices and fees, the problems on the ground become even more of an annoyance. Congress now has a chance to help fix some of them by raising the cap on a fee used to pay for airport improvements.
Airports are allowed to levy a passenger facility charge of up to $4.50 per ticket to help pay for projects like new or expanded terminals and runways that have been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration. The cap was last increased in 2000, and airports say it should be raised to $8.50 and indexed for inflation.
