BAA loses legal bid to avoid sale of two airports

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The former national airport operator, now an affiliate of the Spanish group BTP Ferrovial, has been locked in a legal battle with the competition commission for two years and voiced disappointment that it has not been granted the right to appeal.

BAA has already been forced to sell Gatwick airport, Britain's second busiest hub, to US investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners

However the British competition authorities have called on it to offload two more airports, another in London and one in Scotland, to end a dominance they said hurts passengers and airlines financially.

That means Stansted and either Edinburgh or Glasgow airports.

"BAA has today been informed that this permission has not been granted," to appeal against that decision, the company said in a statement.

"We are disappointed by the Supreme Court's decision not to hear our appeal," a BAA spokesman said.

"We continue to make the case to the competition commission that the circumstances in which they found reason to force the sale of airports have changed significantly since early 2009," the spokesperson said.

The dispute's flight path has not been smooth.

In December 2009 an appeal tribunal upheld BAA's appeal against the competition authorities' decision, however that ruling was overturned by the court of appeal last October.

With the supreme court on Thursday upholding the court of appeal's decision, BAA has run out of legal options and can now depend only upon an unlikely change of heart by the CC.

Ferrovial bought BAA in 2006.

It currently operates six airports in Britain, London's Heathrow -- the world's busiest airport for international passenger traffic -- as well as Stansted, northeast of London, Southampton in southern England and Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland.