ABSTRACT
The received wisdom is that airports, because of large fixed costs, require large volumes of traffic before they can become financial viable.2 And, because it can take years, sometimes many years, to build sufficient traffic for profitability, it is to be expected that airports will require public sector support; indeed, it is natural for airports to be publicly owned. Of course, there comes a time when some airports have sufficient business to enable their ownership to be transferred to the private sector, but such profitable airports are ‘natural monopolies’ and, therefore, should be subject to economic regulation.3
