British Airways says today that the airport regulation system has failed in allowing BAA to increase landing fees at Heathrow and Gatwick.

It will mean, intones the airline ominously, that Heathrow passengers will have to pay 17 per cent more. What BA carefully doesn't say is that the 17 per cent increase will have to be in fares.

Because it won't. For a decade, fares have been driven lower and lower, to the point that a five million seat sale by Ryanair et all barely registers on the traveller's consciousness.

Fares will not rise but the extras will. The 17 per cent will be accounted for by airport charges, baggage fees and other extras which airlines now desperately keep off the line titled "fare."

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The Office of Fair Trading does, of course, insist that airlines bundle in the extras with the fare when advertising a headline price.

But airlines will always breakdown the overall figure, thereby saying they are really cheap but it's the others who make you pay - airports, immigration and security, even - in Ryanair's case - the bloke who provides the wheelchairs.

But BA is right - of course airport regulation has failed.

It has failed for many reasons, not least because there are too many old school airlines like BA scrapping for customers with low-cost upstarts. BA initially relied on its reputation, service levels and generous ticketing rules but soon learned that headline pricing is the only game in town.

It cost £400 to fly to the Cote d'Azur a decade ago, now we all expect to pay a tenth of that. And so BA has been forced to accept that a hot breakfast and beer on tap doesn't make up the difference. It'll even charge you to carry a surfboard now.

But regulation has also failed because BAA was bought by a Spanish airport company with loads of debt and ambition - but which, in the words of a livid regional airline, Flybe, "clearly has no interest in the well-being of the UK economy."

The company, Ferovial, can hardly be blamed for years of neglect in airport infrastructure, however. For starters, it has to repair a crumbling Heathrow, pay for T5 and cater for new generations of aircraft. It also has to provide terminal comfort for twice the number of travellers predicted a decade ago, thanks largely to airline pricing.

BAA/Ferovial can also point its own finger at the successive governments that have proved fabulously gutless in deciding where to build the extra runways, terminals or even a new airport that London and Britain have clearly needed in the past 25 years.

So at whose doorstep does the accusation of airport regulation failure really lie? Well, it's not at the feet of the traveller, who has been highly delighted in being able to fly to Rome for a tenner, and then felt righteous about their lost bag at Heathrow or Stansted passport control nightmare.

Yet the game is nearly up. The number of us who fly has narrowed to near zero growth in the past year. Even the number of continental jaunts will hit the red within the next year.

The baggage failures and passport queues do leave a nasty taste. Travellers really don't like paying to take skis or a slightly oversized weekend bag. They resent having to leave their terminal cappucino at the gate and buy a £2 freeze-dried coffee on the plane.

Then there are the neglected enviromental issues. Pressure on parents from their right-on kids is driving them to camping and rail holidays. Guilt-ridden Stansted weekend warriors will rediscover Southwold.

Fuel surcharges will bite harder (because the airlines haven't protected themselves against oil price increases) and the headline fare will rise, even without BAA.

And isn't it all about time? The South Sea Bubble of £10 flights has never been sustainable in the long-term, and we should look back on the first decade of the 21st century fondly as that ridiculous time we all flew to Krakow for a penny because we could.

Airline prices have to rise to keep everybody happy: the enviromentalists, the airlines, the government and the lobbyists against airport expansion. Honestly, travellers won't mind paying more and getting a hot breakfast again. Say £250 to Cannes? Fair enough.

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