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.