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BAA is to airports what Coca-Cola is to the soft drinks industry: it pretty much owns the lot. All the big airports such as Gatwick, Heathrow, Stansted, Manchester, Glasgow, Aberdeen and more, are owned by the giant firm. However, things might all be about to change and the disastrous year that the aviation industry has had in the UK might be about to knock the school bully off his perch.

The muscle that BAA yields promoted an investigation from the Competition Commission, which concluded that such a monopoly on the industry was not healthy and that it might be forced to sell off some of its airports. This immediately set the business world alight and none more so than in the camp of that national treasure, Sir Richard Branson.

Branson is the ultimate risk-taker in terms of new business deals and has always been the same, irrespective of the millions in the bank. He pricked his ears up when Northern Rock were in trouble and now he’s pricking them up again with BAA. It’s not a bad idea to have one of the privately owned airlines in control of the airport; after all, they know the most about what passengers want and don’t want on a day to day basis.

The concern though is that such a deal from Virgin would mean we go from one monopoly to another. If Virgin owned Gatwick, then many of their rival airlines might worry that Virgin Atlantic would dominate the runways. However, Gatwick is big enough to be divided up and split amongst the airlines and this might end up being the best solution to the problem.