Landing fee

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Landing fees are a charge paid by an airline to an airport company for landing at a particular airport. Landing fees can vary greatly between airports, with congested airports, ones where most of the landing slots are held by airlines being able to charge premium prices because of supply and demand, while less congested airports charge less because the demand is not as high. The money generated by landing fees is used to pay for the maintenance or expansion of the airport's buildings, runways, aprons and taxiways.

Landing fees can also be used to attract more flights by keeping the fees low. Some airports, especially general aviation airports do not charge landing fees.

There may be a correlation between the amount of traffic an airport can manage and its fees, based on the assumption that a larger airport can handle more traffic and thus spread the total airport maintenance and operating costs out over more carriers, as well as being able to generate more revenues from concessions, retail, parking and other services. As an example, Kennedy Airport in Brooklyn, NY operates nine terminals while Toronto's Pearson Airport operates three: Toronto has the highest international landing fees, while Kennedy is not even in the top ten. The airport with the second-highest landing fees in North America is Kennedy's municipal sibling, La Guardia. Again, Kennedy is a bigger airport than either Pearson or La Guardia - suggesting that the sheer amount of total traffic (air, passenger and retail services, etc) at Kennedy helps reduce the per capita expenses and thus keep landing fees relatively low.

[edit] Types of fees

Fees can be based on any number of factors including:

  • weight;
  • number of passengers;
  • time of day;
  • aircraft home airport (some airports do not charge fees for aircraft based at that airport or offer a lower fee for them);
  • operator class (some airports may charge a fee for specific types of operators, like part 135 or 121, and not other aircraft operators).
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