It seems to be a clutching at straws argument to be honest.
Yes, MAG own the #3 and #4 airports, but then consider that both of those airports combined still don’t match up to Heathrow’s passenger figure, I’m not quite sure how you can call into question the ‘unfair size of MAG’ or call it a monopoly?
Then where do we draw the line? Do we question BA’s monopoly on Heathrow slots? Or Easyjet at Gatwick? Or Ryanair at Stansted? Because they operate more than 25% of the passenger throughput of those airports, so that unfair surely?
Or should we also sanction Tesco? They have 28% of U.K. supermarket customers, over the 25% you state MAG should be investigated if they reach?
Seriously, straws in a clutch. It’s interesting LHR alone accounts for over 80m pax in normal times, versus MAG nearly 65m total, but it’s not the clear market dominance of LHR we should be investigating, it’s MAG? Really fighting the wrong enemies there?
Not clutching at straws, just not a MAN/MAG fanboy like some posters on this forum.
Unless you start selling off Heathrow terminals to different companies, you can’t do anything else there. Different terminals owned by different companies/airlines is a common model in the US, and looking at the state of many US airports, thats hardly a model we should be trying to strive for.
You answer your own point about BA, easyJet and Ryanair. Whilst they have monopolies at each of their respective airports, the catchment of the 3 airports has a large overlap and so passengers still have a choice. Even at the same airport, passengers have a choice of other airlines. For a large part of the East of England and the East Midlands, flying from a non-MAG airport requires a significantly longer journey, and in some cases just isn’t practical.
As you pointed out in an earlier post, there are over 30 airports in the UK. There are nowhere near that many supermarket chains in the UK. Therefore you would expect a supermarket chain to have a higher share of the market.
To be honest, at the moment I don’t think the size of MAG is a problem. However if its share of the UK market increases above a certain level, it should be looked at from a competition perspective. Maybe 25% is too low, but clearly there is a figure otherwise BAA would still exist. If the industry and independent “investigators” find its not causing any competition problems then fine it’s not.