I might be risking a particularly vigorous rubber-glove probe the next time I fly, but I’d just like to say that Heathrow is the worst airport on the planet.

Sure, Miami is hellish, Bangalore is plagued by mozzies and Lagos is just plain suicidal, but Heathrow trumps the lot with its own special brand of misery. It is, as I’m sure you’re aware, the most sprawling, ugly, depressing place to begin or end a holiday, a twilight zone of queues, rip-off restaurants, broken travolators and seating made of cheese-graters so you can’t sit down, you just have to keep shopping in the overpriced shops.

Then there are the toilets: they can leave you psychologically scarred for life. The last time I risked it, while waiting for my (delayed, of course) luggage at Terminal 4, I slid across a fetid floor to a toilet so blocked, it looked as if someone had patted it down with a spade. I still have Vietnam-style flashbacks.

Then there’s getting to and from the place in the first place. We’re always whinging about certain no-frills airlines depositing us in obscure tertiary airports miles from where we wanted to be. But Heathrow is just as bad. It can take hours, which feel like days, to get to London. The Tube is soul-destroyingly slow and traveller-unfriendly (where do I put my suitcase?), the Heathrow Express is expensive and, the last time I was on it, smelly, and taxis are out of the question for anyone who doesn’t play Premiership football.

What’s worse — and I know I’m starting to sound all UKIP-apoplectic here — all these grumbles pre-date the new security measures. Since August 10, Heathrow has become even more intolerable. Manchester coped well in the aftermath of the attempted terrorist plot, bringing in extra staff quickly and keeping passengers informed, but Heathrow went to pieces. Almost six months on, it still doesn’t have enough staff to keep security queues down. You just have to stand there looking at all the unmanned X-ray machines, wondering why they couldn’t have hired a few more people to tell us to take our shoes off.

Last week, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) stepped in with a lengthy report damning the British Airports Authority (BAA), which owns Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted (but not Manchester).



It blamed the sorry state of London’s airports on BAA’s virtual monopoly in the southeast (90 per cent of passengers in the region use them) and announced its intention to report the company to the Competition Commission (CC).

“Greater competition could bring significant benefits for passengers,” said John Fingleton, the OFT’s chief executive. “There is evidence of poor quality and high charges... and we believe that a full inquiry into BAA’s structure is justified.”

The report details long queues, lack of staff, poor facilities and bad maintenance among the many deficiencies of BAA airports. The conclusion the average grumpy passenger has to draw is that because airlines and passengers have no choice but to use these airports, BAA doesn’t need to be efficient or provide good value. It can even let its toilets brim with sewage.

British Airways welcomed the report, calling for Stansted and Heathrow to be forced into separate ownership. Virgin Atlantic also welcomed it, saying that consumers would benefit from better terminals and more efficient services if there was competition between airports.

In May, BAA posted pretax profits of £620m. This strongly suggests that in the areas of Heathrow where passengers aren’t being forced to buy teddy bears at Harrods or queue for a frisk, BAA has large printing presses from which flow crisp £50 notes.

Hopefully, the writing is on the wall for BAA’s monopoly, and we might see an end to the cheese-grater seats and shoddy treatment of passengers. But the plan to refer the company to the CC is only provisional. There is an eight-week consultation period, during which interested parties can register their views. I might e-mail them.



Just in case you want to too, it’s airport.study@oft.gsi.gov.uk.