BAA told to sell two airports!

Flying the flag....but for how long?

Well, well! BAA is not flavour of the month. Having been told to sell off Gatwick they now have another crusty jewel in their crown to sell. Stansted is seen by the Competition Commission as the second airport BAA should not have. But it doesn't end there. The hapless airport company is also told to sell either Glasgow or Edinburgh as well. This is all a bit like the ditty Ten Green Bottles, or, in their case, seven. They did have seven. They could end up with only four. And if Heathrow doesn't get better than Calcutta Airport, they might have none.

BAA once was the "British Airports Authority" and did have some authority. Then they were privatised and stuck with the BAA monicker, but were definitely no longer an authority. At this rate BAA could mean Bugger All Airports, but that would be terrible. They're not that bad. They just need to get a grip of things. Like many corporate businesses they put themselves first, the shareholders second and the customers come a poor third. If they don't want to have their airports picked off one by one they should figure out how to put all three - customers, bosses and shareholders - in a happy win-win situation.

Unless that happens they can expect to circle the planes as the passengers may be on the warpath!

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BAA to be broken up?

The Competition Commission is halfway through its deliberations on the merits of BAA having the lion's share of British airports. The BBC still hankers after the old "British Airports Authority", but BAA is not British and it certainly lacks authority. Airports seems to be the only word with a common thread in all this. When Margaret Thatcher privatised the monolith, she probably had no idea of how air travel would increase and that the Spanish would be running the show.

Now the CC has embarked on a probe to see if it is a good thing to force Ferrovial to divest itself of one or more of the airports in their ownership. "We are particularly concerned by its (BAA's) apparent lack of responsiveness to the differing needs of its airline customers, and hence passengers," said Christopher Clarke, chairman of the BAA airports inquiry. He said he was also worried that having so many airports owned by BAA meant that big development projects were being carried out one at a time. I think that the CC's concentration on capacity overlooks the dire need for competition.

Both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are looking to BAA to divest itself of an airport or two. "The case for breaking up BAA gets stronger by the day," said Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers. "BAA's monopolistic grip on so many of the UK's major airports has not been serving passengers or airlines well - as can be seen from the debacle at Terminal 5 and the yearly Heathrow hassle during the summer months," she added.

Personally I'm not affected, as Birmingham Airport stands alone from the airport groupings. However, it shouldn't be about what I want, it is about making the lives of Heathrow passengers a bit better. I can't see the existing BAA set-up figuring it out in a hurry.

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