Nobody likes Heathrow. The former Great Western Aerodrome has been London’s main airport since the air ministry handed it over at the end of the war. It has since grown to be the busiest international airport in the world and the second busiest cargo port. What Heathrow does not boast about is that it is a monument to bad planning, ineptitude and greed. Far from being a jewel in Britain’s commercial crown, its failings threaten to drive valuable business overseas. Anyone whose misfortune it is to travel through Heathrow - more than 67m do each year (50% more than the airport’s capacity) - travels back in time.

Heathrow transports us back to the days when Britain was blighted by industrial disputes, mysterious staff shortages, truculent workers and queueing on a scale not seen since rationing. The shops and overpriced car parks add up to a “commercial experience” that, according to BAA, which runs Heathrow, delivers 40% of its revenues. That may please Ferrovial, BAA’s Spanish owner, but for most passengers it is a sick joke. After being treated like cattle and forced to queue for hours, we are then given the privilege of buying a Gucci handbag or some Chanel No 5.

It cannot go on like this. Tony Douglas quit as Heathrow’s chief executive last month, admitting that the airport was “bursting at the seams” and in parts was “held together by sticking plaster”. Sir Thomas Harris, vice-chairman of Standard Chartered Capital Markets, spoke for many in the City when he attacked the “appalling conditions” at the airport and said many executives go out of their way to avoid it. Kitty Ussher, the new City minister, says the “Heathrow hassle” is discouraging international firms from conducting business in London. Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, says Heathrow “shames” the city.

These problems did not arise overnight. A snail’s pace planning system has much to answer for. When terminal 5 opens next year it will be two decades since it was mooted and 15 years since the planning application was lodged. China has built a network of international airports in half that time. Only now is action being taken to streamline planning. Successive governments encouraged air travel without providing the capacity. They have also ratcheted up security in a way that has contributed to delays.

In the end, though, the buck stops with BAA. Today we report that it had the audacity to ask for bonus payments to improve services at Heathrow. The way BAA was privatised, leaving it in control of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, was wrong. Its stranglehold on all three London airports means that competition, the vital spur, is absent and it has failed to invest sufficiently in more staff and better equipment. Heathrow’s shortcomings are damaging London and damaging Britain. Unless BAA can offer a convincing prospect that things will improve, somebody else should be given the opportunity of running it and its monopoly should be broken up.