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BAA backs down over forced sale of Stansted
Benedict Moore-Bridger23.02.09
BAA is to agree to sell Stansted airport rather than take legal action to prevent the move, it emerged today.
The move will bring to an end the operator's dominance of London's airports since it was created 40 years ago as a government agency.
The airports group, majority-owned by Spanish company Ferrovial, has fought to keep hold of Stansted despite being told by the Competition Commission it had to relinquish it.
Senior BAA executives have pledged to go through the courts to prevent the sale of the Essex airport, however the Spanish infrastructure group is understood now to be prepared to drop its objections.
The final decision on airport ownership will be made by the Commission next month, and is expected to order BAA to give up Gatwick, which it is already selling, Stansted and one of its two Scottish airports.
Industry insiders said they had expected a climbdown ever since the Government decided to support the construction of a third runway at Heathrow.
An airline executive said: "There was no point in [BAA] going on fighting the Competition Commission. It has won on the bigger point of expanding Heathrow,"
Reader views (2)
Having flogged it off to Ferrovial, how much compensation do we have to pay to dig BAA out of the hole that they have created?
- Michael Murphy, brightlingsea england
Does this mean that people will see sense and stop the plan to build a second runway on prime farming and woodland at Stansted, not to mention the enforced bulldozing of several listed buildings of antiquity? Without the BAA, who develop airports as giant shopping malls as well as for flying from, perhaps the Stansted development will be seen in a more realistic light-a commercial and environmental non-starter.
- Jon Kent, Hertford. UK
