Congo airport fees: What international travellers need to know before they fly

The Mt Kenya Times

Africa News
10 November 2026

The Mt Kenya Times

Conflicting reports about charges at DRC airports have left passengers uncertain about what they owe — and to whom

By Jacob Kinyua

International travellers flying through the Democratic Republic of the Congo face a potentially confusing array of airport charges, with reports in November 2026 citing fees totalling as much as US$115 on a round trip — though whether all three charges apply to every itinerary remains unclear and dependent on individual airline billing practices.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has long been one of central Africa’s most strategically significant aviation hubs, linking the continent’s second-largest country by area to regional and intercontinental routes. Yet its airport fee structure has attracted growing scrutiny, particularly after Le Point CD reported in November 2026 that international passengers could face a US$55 Go Pass charge alongside a separate US$30 airport security fee — amounts that, combined on a return journey, could add considerably to the cost of travel without passengers necessarily knowing why.

The Go Pass is the more established of the two charges. A Congolese government budget document describes it as an airport infrastructure development charge linked to the Régie des voies aériennes, known as the RVA, which is the country’s airports and air navigation authority. The charge is intended to fund airport modernisation and the acquisition of new air navigation equipment — broadly legitimate purposes, though the applicable amount varies by route and by the tariff in force at the time of travel. Passengers on different routes may therefore be quoted different figures, adding to the opacity surrounding what is actually owed.

The second charge has a more contested origin. In November 2025, Radio Okapi and Actualité.cd both reported that the Congolese government had entered into an agreement with Securiport LLC, a United States company specialising in border security and biometric screening systems, under which a fee of US$30 per passenger would be levied on international commercial flights, on both arrival and departure. Le Point CD reported that airlines would collect the charge and transfer the proceeds into a joint account, with 85 per cent allocated to Securiport and 15 per cent retained by the Congolese state.

The arrangement immediately drew questions. Critics noted that an 85-15 revenue split heavily favouring a foreign private company from public passenger fees was an unusual arrangement for a sovereign government to sanction. The report, however, did not establish how much had actually been collected or transferred under the agreement, and as of 10th November 2026 no dated tariff notice or itemised ticket confirming that airlines were actively collecting an extra US$30 under the Securiport agreement had appeared in publicly available records.

The Congolese government’s position, as conveyed through official channels in November 2025, appeared to dispute the narrative of a new fee burden. An adviser at the Interior Ministry told the Agence Congolaise de Presse that an existing security charge was already incorporated into international ticket prices and that travellers would face no additional supplement. The adviser characterised the change not as a new charge but as a reform to how an existing one was collected and tracked — a distinction that may reassure some passengers but has done little to resolve the confusion among others, particularly given the lack of publicly accessible documentation confirming exactly what airlines are billing and under which authority.

Securiport’s own country page for the DRC likewise contains a note acknowledging that its listed records do not establish that passengers are currently required to pay the reported charge — an admission that, while technically measured, does little to clarify the situation for a passenger standing at a check-in desk or reviewing a fare breakdown online.

For practical purposes, the arithmetic is straightforward even if the underlying policy is not. Adding the reported Go Pass figure of US$55 to two applications of the US$30 Securiport-linked charge — one on arrival, one on departure — produces a possible round-trip total of US$115 in airport-related fees, over and above the base airfare. That is not a trivial sum on routes where ticket prices are already elevated by the limited competition serving many Congolese airports. Whether all three amounts are genuinely due on a single itinerary depends entirely on the applicable tariff and what the airline or airport is actually billing at the time of travel.

The broader concern for travellers is not simply financial. It is the absence of a reliable, publicly accessible and up-to-date source of information about what charges exist, what they fund, who collects them, and how passengers can verify that they are not being billed twice for the same service under different names. Airport fee structures in developing markets can be opaque at the best of times, but the DRC situation is complicated further by the involvement of a private foreign contractor, by contradictory official statements, and by the apparent gap between what has been reported and what can be independently confirmed.

Aviation analysts who track African airport charges note that passengers increasingly expect transparency — not least because low-cost and digital-first carriers have accustomed travellers worldwide to itemised fare breakdowns that distinguish taxes, fees and surcharges from the base ticket price. Where that transparency is absent, trust erodes and travellers become reluctant to book routes they cannot price with confidence.

The practical advice for anyone flying to or from the DRC in the near term is clear and worth following carefully. Request an itemised fare from your airline, checking both the arrival and departure legs separately. If an unfamiliar charge appears, ask what it covers, under which authority it is levied, who collects it and whether it is already embedded in the ticket price. Retain any payment receipt issued at the airport so it can be compared against the original fare breakdown. And if the airline cannot answer those questions satisfactorily, escalate before you travel rather than after.

Transparency in airport charges is not a bureaucratic nicety — it is a basic condition of passenger trust. Until the DRC provides it, travellers will continue to arrive uncertain of what they owe and leave unsure of what they paid.