Charges Fly Over Air Travel Surcharges : Airlines: Fees are added to ticket prices for everything from customs inspections and fuel to airport construction costs.

NEW YORK —  Airline passengers entering the United States may soon have to shell out an extra $1 per ticket for the government inspection to prevent illegal food or animals from entering the country. They might also have to pay $1 per ticket to help operate the U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration that lures foreigners to this country.

Persons traveling domestically already pay an 8% tax every time they fly, a largely invisible levy that Congress is trying to boost by 25%. International passengers pay a “departure” tax that, like the 8% domestic fee, goes into the Aviation Trust Fund to defray the federal government’s costs in handling international air traffic. The government also charges a 5% tax on cargo shipments.

These are just a few of the actual or proposed surcharges and taxes that airline passengers pay before they step on a plane. Travelers are increasingly being charged extra for everything from airport construction costs to fuel to security inspections.

Airlines defend some of the surcharges as necessary to recoup some of their growing operating costs. But they complain about some of the taxes that the government orders them to collect.

And passenger groups say the increasing use of surcharges and taxes have become excessive. They contend that passengers are often not informed about the fees and that if they are, such added charges are put into advertisements in type so small that it’s not easily noticed.

Some taxes, critics contend, are used by the federal government to lower the budget deficit--not to defray airline travel costs as is the stated purpose.

“It is a deception,” says Christopher Witkowski, director of the Ralph Nader-founded Aviation Consumer Action Project, which works to improve airline safety and passenger rights. “These surcharges misrepresent the cost of air travel to the consumer. The airlines don’t include the surcharges--both the government ones and the ones that the carriers institute--in the total (advertised) fare.”

“The trend over the last three years is that whenever fuel prices go up, in a matter of days you will see a modest increase in the price of an airline ticket,” says Richard Livingston, chairman of the 110,000-member Airline Passengers Assn. of North America. “In my business, (when) my prices go up I expect my profit margins to be reduced for a time.”

The controversy over surcharges was heightened most recently when American Airlines--blaming high charges it paid for construction and other projects at five airports, including New York’s LaGuardia and Newark International Airport--instituted surcharges of $1 to $4 beginning next week.

If all pending surcharges are imposed, federal taxes and charges will have increased from 2% of the average ticket price in 1980 to 14%, according to the Air Transport Assn., the airline industry’s chief trade group. Likewise, the ATA says, international ticket prices will have gone up an average of $51 during the past decade, with $29 of that to pay for basic government services.

“It’s as though you had to pay a law enforcement surcharge every time you drove through an intersection at which a police officer was directing traffic,” the ATA says in a draft report criticizing the growth of surcharges.

One of the most controversial of the charges is the 8% tax. Airlines and passenger groups alike are critical of the federal government for diverting the tax proceeds from its intended use of upgrading airport and other aviation facilities. Instead, they say, much of the money has been put into the general fund to help lower the federal budget deficit. There is $7 billion in unused, unspent ticket revenue in the Aviation Trust Fund.

“This has become a hidden tax,” says James Brown, an official of the Partnership for Improved Air Travel, a coalition of airlines, aircraft manufacturers and frequent fliers. “Vast numbers of airline passengers have no idea that they are paying a tax to the government and how abusive the government has been with the money.”

Brown added that the money must be used before long.

“We believe that the air transportation resources are at capacity in this country,” he says. “The money must be used to keep up with the demand for increased travel. If we don’t make these investments now, we will be closer and closer to gridlock in our air transportation system as we approach the 21st Century.”

Other taxes are also passed on to passengers as surcharges. When local municipalities tax the airlines, the carriers frequently pass the burden on to their customers. Such was the case with recent fuel taxes levied in several cities and in Florida.

Delta Air Lines levies a $2-per-ticket surcharge for passengers flying from Florida, $5 from Chicago, $1 from Denver and $2.50 from Boston. The added prices, says Delta, result from higher fuel taxes ththeo hat it must pay in those cities. Most of the other carriers have done the same, although a few charge $2 from Denver. American Airlines says it has had such surcharges in effect for 18 months.

Frequently, the airlines act as tax collectors for the government. Travelers entering the United States must pay $5 for customs even if their bags aren’t inspected.

And pending in Congress is a charge to cover services of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a levy that would have to be paid by all persons entering the country, will also be $5.

Local airports are not allowed to charge passenger taxes. But Congress is considering a bill that would allow localities to levy a Passenger Facility Tax, or head tax. It would be $3 per enplanement with a maximum of $6 each way. A person making a connection would be levied the maximum.

But not all the surcharges are the result of government edict.

Airlines impose surcharges to defray their security costs. Pan American World Airways charges passengers $10 round trip to underwrite the costs of the intensive security inspections required by federal regulations on U.S. flag airlines. Delta’s security surcharge, which applies only to transatlantic passengers, is $5 each way. All other carriers have followed suit.

Often airlines pass on added fuel costs to passengers without calling them surcharges by simply raising fares. Last January, most carriers increased ticket prices 4% to reflect the soaring cost of jet fuel.