Saturday 16 / November / 2024
Muscat: All passengers departing from the Muscat International Airport will have to pay additional 300 baisa for Common Use Passenger Processing Systems (CUPPS) soon, according to airlines and travel agents.
Common Use Passenger Processing Systems (CUPPS) are the range of services that help different airlines to share common areas on or off airport simultaneously.
“This includes the computers at check-in counters, gate podium positions and so on,” a senior official of an Indian airline operating in Oman said.
Times of Oman had already reported that all international passengers departing from Oman Airports will have to pay a security fee of OMR 1.
“The plan was to enforce the security fee from January 1, 2017, but the proposed implementation of security charges have been postponed until mid-January,” an airline official said.
The new charges – OMR1 for security and 300 baisa for CUPPS will be added to the cost of tickets.
“Both the charges are not unique. A large number of countries have already introduced security fee and CUPPS charges long time back,” a senior official of an airline said.
And once the commencement of operations at the new Muscat International Airport passenger terminal starts, the CUPPS charges will be increased to 600 baisa per departing passenger. The circular was issued by Samer Ahmed Al Nabhani, GM Commercial Operation, OAMC.
The Oman airport tax was increased from OMR 8 to OMR10 in 2016. “This came into effect from March 15, 2016 for travel on and after July 1, 2016,” a travel agent said.
Passengers are, however, not happy. “First there was security tax and now there is CUPPS charges. Though the amount is small but still we have to pay from our pocket,” said S Mukherjee, a resident of Oman.
