interesting article. I work in an infrastructure industry, and good and bad regulation (and/or the lack of it or too much of it) can have a dramatic impact in terms of both service quality and the sustainability of the business. If there is an element of monopoly at an airport which isn't properly regulated to reflect any elements of "market failure", then it doesn't matter where that airport is; it will not produce the optimum outcome.

That said, I've always wondered why airports don't make sure that they maximise your time available to do shopping....i.e. I always assumed that queuing for security was a crazily counter-productive in terms of revenue....

But if the extra revenue gained from more shopping does not outweigh the costs of providing extra security to mimimize queues then in the absence of appropriate Service Quality regulation (standards coupled with financial incentives) why should BAA be expected to minimize the queues?