BAA loses appeal, must sell London Stansted

UK airports operator BAA lost its appeal Feb. 1 of a 2009 ruling by the UK Competition Commission (CC) that had the effect of directing it to sell London Stansted (STN).

“It is now surely time for BAA to accept our findings and proceed with the necessary divestments,” said Laura Carstensen, who chairs the CC's BAA Remedies Implementation Group.

The CC in March 2009 decided that BAA should sell two of the three London airports it then controlled and one of its airports in Scotland, either Glasgow (GLA) or Edinburgh (EDI), to address competition concerns. The company had already decided by the time the ruling was issued to sell London Gatwick (LGW) to alleviate its debt, but promptly took legal recourse to try to block the forced sale of STN. It obviously would not consider selling valuable London Heathrow (LHR).

BAA is in the process of selling Edinburgh (EDI) (ATW's Airports Today, Jan. 4).

After years of legal challenges, the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal decided to uphold the CC’s decision to require BAA to sell STN. A BAA spokesperson said the company will “now carefully consider before making any further statements.”

STN handled 18.3 million passengers in 2011, down 2.8% from 2010. It was the only UK airport in BAA’s portfolio to register a decline in passenger traffic, according to BAA data. Aircraft movements decreased 4.5% year-over-year to 136,911. It handles mostly short–and medium-haul point-to-point flights and serves as a base for Ryanair and easyJet.

Ryanair said it welcomed the decision, claiming that while “BAA Stansted has been delaying the sale they have doubled passenger charges and presided over record traffic declines from 24 million in 2007 to 18 million in 2011.”