Recently, British Airways has raised a serious concern over the state of affairs at UK Airports while urging the Competition Commission and the UK authorities to devise a system that gives way for a thorough regulation of airports and airport operators. The insistence from BAA follows the recommendation of Competition Commission that BAA needs to leave any two of the three airports owned and operated by it because of falling performance and declining customer satisfaction. Notably, BAA presently owns and operates Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports. When Ryanair is explicitly forcing the government to force BAA to give up two of these airports, British Airways has the notion that the goal of the government needs to be improving the condition of regulations at the airports rather than calling for a change of ownership. 

Among several suggestions forwarded by British Airlines, one of the potential suggestions to ensure better regulations at the airports is to introduce a licensing system that would put the owners of the airports in a position where they are more accountable to anything that goes wrong within their airport. In other words, if BAA is not able to meet the customer satisfaction in addition to satisfying the government authorities that would eventually give way for the authorities to impose a series of sanctions and any other appropriate punitive measures to penalize the operator. However, the principal factor in implementing the system is that the public authorities must be able to closely monitor the state of affairs at the airports and decide the appropriate action as and when necessary.