Britain's airports are set for a radical shake-up designed to improve service for passengers after the regulator ordered BAA to sell Gatwick and Stansted airports. The company's more than 20-year old stranglehold on Britain's busiest airports will be broken after the Competition Commission confirmed its earlier signal that Gatwick, Stansted and either Glasgow or Edinburgh airport will need to be sold within two years.

The regulator has been examining evidence on BAA's ownership of seven UK airports for the best part of two years. It concluded today that "given the nature and scale of the competition problems we have found, we do not consider that alternative measures, such as the sale of only one of the London airports or greater regulation, will suffice."

The move is likely to welcomed by airlines and passengers will be hopeful that service at the airports will improve. BAA, which will retain Heathrow - the UK's biggest and busiest airport - today dismissed the Commission's analysis as "flawed" and that selling the airports may be "impractical in the current economic conditions."

Read the full article in The Telegraph.


BAA dismissed the Commission's analysis as "flawed"?

Unlike fantasy jumbos and an airport the size of Gatwick bolted on to Heathrow with no increase in noise or emissions, of course.