The new terminal at Toronto's Pearson International Airport won't open for months, but already there are questions about the cost of the project -- and how those costs might be passed on to the travel industry and consumers.

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) continues to press forward with plans to open a $4.4 billion terminal at the country's largest airport. It is the largest privately funded construction project in Canada and is scheduled to open in February 2004.

The terminal's opening comes at a time when the airline industry is still recovering from the impact of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the SARS crisis and the war in Iraq.

And, since taking over management and maintenance of the airport from the federal government in 1996, the GTAA has raised landing fees by 57 per cent.

Last year alone, the GTAA boosted airline landing fees by 29 per cent and terminal fees, also paid by carriers, by 10 per cent.

The GTAA is a not-for-profit corporation and as such, it must maintain its mandatory net revenue-to-debt ratio of 1.25 per cent. In order to meet the financial demands of debt servicing and airport expansion, it is expected to announce further fee increases later this month.

The Association of Airline Representatives in Canada and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) say they may have to consider taking their planes elsewhere if the GTAA doesn't find a way to reduce costs when air travel drops off.

Cliff Mackay, President of the Air Transport Association of Canada, told CTV News that the costs of flying through Toronto are too much, considering the trouble the airline industry has had the past two years.

"The market is slowly starting to come back now," Mackay said, "but customers are very price sensitive ... If we have to increase prices because of significant increases in fees at Pearson we will lose customers and that will just make our financial situation worse."

GTAA spokesman Peter Gregg defends the new terminal. He told CTV News that "it is a world class terminal building and really puts Toronto on the map in terms of world gateway airports."

Gregg says that the new terminal project had to continue, despite recent blows to the industry, because the paperwork was complete and postponing construction would be unaffordable.

Mackay told CTV News, that "unlike some other airports in the country that have gone to significant lengths to try to keep their costs under control and help out their customers, the passengers, in a very tough time, Pearson has continued to spend and its costs have continued to grow at quite a significant rate."

The new terminal is intended to hold more passengers and to reduce travel time through the airport.

Meanwhile the international airline community, including Alitalia, KLM, and El Al Israel Airlines, are demanding that the Canadian government intervene and set some boundaries for Pearson, which they feel has too much power.

"There are fees on fuel, on handling, markups the GTAA has imposed." says Eugene Hoeven, IATA's assistant director of user charges. "The situation is becoming untenable."

Based on a report by CTV's Peter Murphy