BAA, the airport operator which runs seven of the UK’s biggest airports, has been criticised again by the Competition Commission.

In a report into Stansted Airport, the hub of several low-budget airlines, the Commission said that BAA acted against the public interest in relation to waiting times at Stansted and with regard to consultation with airlines over expansion at the Essex airport.

However, it backed Stansted against claims from Ryanair that airlines were being charged too much for using the airport.

BAA was criticised earlier this year by the commission over its ownership of the three large London airports — Gatwick, Stansted and Heathrow.

The airports group decided to sell Gatwick in September but BAA, whose majority shareholder is the Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial, has said it will resist a demand from the commission to dispose of Stansted. A final decision from the commission is due in the first quarter of 2009.

The commission's report today recommended increased charges for the period 2009-14, with a final decision due from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in March 2009, which will hit an already beleaguered airline industry.

It has also recommended that BAA should pay penalties to airlines in the event of poor performance through a quality rebate scheme similar to that in operation at Gatwick.

It also said that poor service at Stansted was not all due to security measures introduced by the British Government to prevent terrorist attacks.

The commission said: “This poor performance was in part due to the new, and more onerous, security arrangements introduced by the Department for Transport in August 2006, but we believed that BAA could have done more to meet the needs of its customers in the period - February 2002 to April 2008.

“We recognised that, more recently, BAA’s performance had significantly improved in this area but, over the period as a whole, we found that Stansted failed to manage security queuing and queue times to avoid unacceptable delays to passengers, crew and flights, and consequently did not further the reasonable interests of the users of the airport.”

A spokesman for BAA said: “We are disappointed that the Competition Commission has failed to reflect large elements of the costs involved in operating Stansted Airport over the next five years and beyond.”

BAA is currently developing a second runway at Stansted.

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