The owner of Manchester Airport is preparing to bid for either Glasgow or Edinburgh airport following a move by the UK's competition regulator to break up BAA's dominance of the aviation market, the Herald reports
The newspaper quotes unnamed sources at Manchester Airport Group (MAG), majority-owned by Manchester Council, saying that it was awaiting ‘with interest’ the result of a two-year Competition Commission inquiry in to BAA's UK airport ownership, due tomorrow. This is expected to force BAA to sell off one of the central-belt airports.
The Herald revealed last August that MAG had expressed interest in buying Glasgow Airport, four months before a surprise provisional finding by the Competition Commission recommended that BAA be forced to sell Edinburgh.
However MAG, together with a Canadian pension fund, is understood to be among the three remaining bidders for Gatwick Airport, and the newspapers source said: ‘If our bid to buy Gatwick is successful, we would not be moving forward with plans to buy one of the Scottish airports. But we are very much interested in buying Glasgow or Edinburgh, depending on which one is put up for sale.’