The UK competition commission has had enough of the incredible queues at Heathrow airport and they're promising to heavily fine the management company that runs the airport.
Now that I'm living in London again, I find myself flying through Heathrow a lot, which has all the charm of a colonoscopy and all the comfort of being trapped in a cargo container. The lines are like something out of the ninth pit of hell, especially in the Virgin terminal, and the rules about carry-ons and so forth keep getting more and more inhospitable.
God, I hope that this means that I can look forward to a more pleasant aviation experience.
"BAA has failed to manage security queueing and queue times to avoid unacceptable delays to passengers, crew and flights, and have not furthered the reasonable interests of the users of Heathrow and Gatwick," a report by the Competition Commission said…
The commission statement contained severe financial implications for Ferrovial, which throw into doubt the refinancing of the £9.3bn debt the Spanish group took on when it bought BAA for £10.3bn last year. The commission backed CAA proposals to slash BAA's return on capital at its two biggest airports, which led Ferrovial to warn that refinancing plans "might not be able to be implemented as envisaged".
(Thanks, Alice!)
