Just heard another interview with a BAA drone. He was giving the party line that there was no need for a sell off as customers were well served by the current situation. What he then claimed just blew his argument out of the water, as in the earlier post, he claimed competition for Heathrow wasn't Gatwick or Stansted, but rather Charles de Gaulle, Schipol and DUBAI [?????!!!!!!!] as major world hubs and that all airlines only operated hub and spoke operations.
Yeah, right!!! If I want to fly from Glasgow to Stockholm or Bristol to Stavanger, Dubai will always be my hub of choice as it's such a short convenient hop through there.
I take the point that there is little direct competition between major airports serving the southeast corner of Londistan, but largely due to blatant social engineering initially by whitehall & carried on long after privatisation by the BAA mandarins who haven't yet woken up, smelt the proverbial coffe & relaised that they're no longer in the Government.
Breaking up BAA is only the start, it needs changes in Government policy and a move away from this dangerous obsession with putting everything through Heathrow and concentrating every bit of industry & the population into the south east corner of the country.