Airport construction fee is collected for the development of airport facilities. This fee is called airport tax abroad. In China, the Airport construction fee amounts to CNY90 (around US$13) for international flights, CNY50 (about US$7.3) for domestic flights and CNY10 for branch flight routes. From September 1st, 2004, the airport construction fee has been included in the airfare and is listed in the TAX item on the ticket.

According to the regulations issued by Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), passengers under the following four conditions are exempt from paying the airport construction fee:

1. Children under 12 (or at 12) with half-fare tickets
2. Passengers holding diplomatic passports on international, Hong Kong or Macau flights
3. International passengers in transit through domestic airports, but stay within the airport waiting hall
4. Passengers taking domestic planes for transit on the day (within an 8 hour interval to the next flight)

In China, the airport construction fee will be charged at CNY10 for those passengers taking the domestic feeder-lines of the following aircrafts:

Related information:
First charged in 1992, the airport construction fee should have been cancelled by 2005 according to the document that the Ministry of Finance of China released in 2002. But now its expiration time has been put off to 2010.

In recent years, calling off the airport construction fee is always a heated topic. Many people and public media think that the CAAC takes advantage of its monopoly to charge this fee. From 1992 to now, the airport construction fee that the CAAC has accumulated is more than CNY30 billion. But how it has been used is still a very complicated problem. The CAAC explains that they turn over a sum of money to the State Treasury each year. One part of the money is controlled by the State Financial Budget; and the other is used to develop the local airport construction.

Is it a misunderstanding between ordinary people and the CAAC, or isn't this regulation transparent enough? It is believed that with the improvement of the state system, people can draw a correct conclusion to this discussion.

Related links:
China Flight Schedule
China Airlines