Court to rule on BAA airports sale order

A ruling which could force airport operator BAA to comply with an order to sell three of its airports will be made in the Court of Appeal today.

The Competition Commission (CC) ruled in March last year that BAA must sell Gatwick and Stansted airports as well one of either Glasgow or Edinburgh.

But BAA successfully appealed against that ruling, with the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) finding last December that there was “apparent bias” in the CC’s ruling over Gatwick.

In turn, the CC appealed to the Court of Appeal against the CAT decision in a case heard last June.

The result of the appeal is due this morning.

Should the decision go in favour of the CC, the sell-off – which has been in a state of limbo since the CAT decision – will be back on track.

BAA had already decided to sell Gatwick before the March 2009 CC sell-off ruling, which followed a lengthy inquiry into UK airport ownership.

However, BAA was concerned that Professor Peter Mozier, one of the CC airports inquiry panel, had a connection to the Manchester Airport Group which had been interested in buying Gatwick.

In its ruling last December, the CAT agreed with BAA’s claim that Professor Mozier’s role meant there had been “apparent bias” in the sell-off decision.

The CAT said that Prof Mozier was not actually biased “but that a fair-minded person would have concluded that there was a real possibility of bias”.

Gatwick was sold last year for £1.5bn (€1.7bn) to US-based investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners.

As well as running Stansted, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports, Spanish-owned BAA also operates Heathrow, Southampton and Aberdeen airports