Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez (Photo from his Facebook page)
MANILA, Philippines — The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) should defer its imposition of higher aviation fuel surcharges as more expensive airplane fares could dampen local and domestic travel and tourism.
Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez made this call on Saturday as the CAB is set to implement higher fuel surcharges in September after three months of no adjustments.
Rodriguez also appealed to Philippine Airlines, Cebu Pacific, Air Asia, and other airline companies to forgo collecting the increased surcharge.
He criticized the CAB for being more concerned with the earnings of airline companies than with the welfare of airline passengers aggrieved by the airlines’ poor service.
“It has been remiss in penalizing airlines for flight cancellations, overbooking resulting in bumping off passengers, delays, inordinate baggage policies, and failure of customer service availability,” he said.
Rodriguez said airlines were now earning billions of pesos in profits due to post-pandemic travel and tourism.
“Higher plane fares will dampen both domestic and international travel. I appeal to the air carriers to defer the higher surcharge to encourage more tourists,” he said.
Rodriguez added: “They can afford to forego the increased surcharge, which is just a small fraction of their ticket price.”
The lawmaker made the remarks amid the CAB’s advisory that aviation fuel surcharges will be at Level 6, higher than the current year-to-date low of Level 4—and which means higher airline fares.
Fuel surcharges are additional fees imposed by airlines to help them recover fuel costs. These are added to the base fare paid by airline passengers.
Under Level 6, passengers of domestic flights will pay fuel surcharges of P185 to P665 each, while passengers of international flights will pay an additional P610.37 to P4,538.40.
This is higher than Level 4 which imposes an additional P117 to P342 for domestic flights and P385.70 to P2,867.82 for international flights.