BAA Stansted sale

According to a report in yesterday’s Sunday Times BAA Ltd is to be officially told by the Competition Commission, within days, that it must start the process of selling Stansted and either Glasgow or Edinburgh airports.  The watchdog concluded back in March that it requires to sell two airports (which would have been three except that BAA had already offloaded Gatwick).

Whilst BAA has a choice, industry opinion is that the sale of Glasgow is preferred to Edinburgh, the Scottish capital’s airport out performing the west coast complex (which also suffers with competition from Prestwick), and with the tram arrival now under way, far more potential.

Last year 6.5m passengers (-9.4 %) passed through Glasgow Airport dramatically down from its 8.8m 2007 peak when it was the number one Scottish airport.  The loss of bmi’s Heathrow services does not seem to have affected throughput.  Prestwick has also seen a big drop, from 2.4m, again in 2007, to 1.6m last year.  For Edinburgh the number for 2010 was 8.5m passengers (-5%). www.baa.com www.competition-commission.org.uk

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