Beginning today, the airline companies of the Chinese mainland can charge insurance extra fees from passengers when they take mainland-started international air routes and Hong Kong and Macao-bound domestic routes, according to the information from the Civil Aviation Administration of China(CAAC), the Beijing Evening News reported today.

Each passenger will be charged no more than US$2.5 for one air route, according to the spokesman with CAAC. The normal domestic airlines won't collect such fees so far, the spokesman added.

Airline companies should pay one-off additional charges after the United States was attacked by terrorists on September 11. Since October 1, the war insurance premium soared.

The new policy has caused airline companies to increase their insurance premium expenditure by some 1 billion yuan (US$120 million), while the charging of insurance extra fees can only make up for a small amount of their outcome, said an insider.

( Eastday.com.cn 10/16/2001)