Charleston airport extends $4.50 departure fee

The extra $4.50 fee that Charleston International Airport levies on departing passengers to help pay for airport improvements will be extended for 18 months starting in December, but it won't have the support of the chairman of the Charleston County Aviation Authority.

Chip Limehouse, a Republican lawmaker from Charleston who heads the authority, stood alone Thursday in a 9-1 vote to keep the fee in place.

"It's a fee increase," he said. "In this day and age, we need to look at every opportunity to cut costs."

The maximum $4.50 fee allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration will bring in an additional $6.9 million through mid-2013, to help pay pre-construction costs for an estimated $143 million makeover of the 26-year-old airport terminal.

Work will begin next year and will take about two years to complete.

Limehouse said he recognized that money raised from the fee will help improve the airport, but he called it optional.

"We don't have to have it," Limehouse said. "We could lessen the scope of the project."

Although the measure passed resoundingly and with little comment from other board members, Airport Director Sue Stevens acknowledged that the project's breadth would be severely narrowed without the fee.

"It would cut it in half," she said.

The airport initiated the passenger charge in March 2010 on every outgoing ticket, and was one of the last major airports in the country to assess the fee, which the FAA first authorized in 1992.

Charleston International saw just over 1 million departing passengers in 2010, averaging more than 2,700 passengers a day, a number that likely will increase this year after Southwest Airlines launched service out of Charleston in March.

Other airports in South Carolina that collect the fee include those in Columbia and Myrtle Beach.

Airports on Hilton Head Island and in Florence have collected a $3 fee in the past, but no longer do so.

Reach Warren L. Wise at 937-5524.

AIRPORT OVERHAUL

The proposed renovation at Charleston International is

expected to be completed in 2014. The project includes:

--Extending the 2 existing concourses

--Adding a 3rd baggage carousel

--Adding hundreds of new parking spaces and redesigning other areas to keep up with the growing number of passengers

--Updating the aging main terminal and reconfiguring it to meet new security standards

Warren Wise