Let's not loose sight of certain airports operated by someone who is a keen aviator and has invested in a number of airports but still wants to run them at a profit.
Indeed, but what happens when he gets bored and wants to do something else, or falls ill, or he passes away? Will his successors always want to do the same?
Regulation is complex but the one I envision essentially achieves these goals:
1) Makes it much harder for landowners from easily closing, re-selling, or re-designating their airport into a site for other uses, such as housing. Due care and consideration with the local community, airport users, and fixed-based businesses needs to be taken into account.
2) Makes it much harder for landowners from raising fees in a disproportinate and unjustified manner. While there are arguments to priorise larger aircraft maximuse the use of the full length of a long runway, fair access must be given to smaller operators including private flights, when there is slot availability. This means any heavy jet airline businesses using the runway for 50% of the time doesn't kill off light aircraft access. But it should also be okay to have peak surcharges (like JFK) and the like to discourage light aircraft from banging circuits, hogging up the space that heavies would otherwise need.
3) Makes it much harder for airport operators to impose practices which are then disproportinately charged to aircraft operators who otherwise wouldn't ordinarily need it. Examples are mandatory handling and miscellaneous security fees. GA was once operating out of places like Stansted and Manchester. Airline businesses flourish and then the GA flight gets £200+ extra charges through no fault or cause of their own.
How this works in practice would be complex, including defining the legal framework which has political backing. It might look a bit like the telecoms or energy market:
1) You have core infrastruture (like BT Openreach) which is protected and price and service regulated.
This makes sure that companies like Openreach can make a profit, but can't screw everyone else over because the owners / investors are pulling the strings to maximise their own dividends to the detriment of the wider community.
The equivalent of this in aviation might be the land - the company owning the runways, the aprons and retail/office space. One can go a step further and even mandate profits to be re-invested into developing the infrastructure (i.e. maintaining those runways and aprons and building a fund to build more if need be).
2) You then have the stuff that sits on top of that core infrastructure, like Talktalk, or Sky, IsupplyEnergy, which is price unregulated (with the exception of anti-competitive behaviour).
The equivalent of this in aviation might be aero clubs, flight schools, engineering companies, exec jet handlers, airline passenger terminals, refuellers, etc.
All are given a level playing field as much as possible to allow their own businesses to flourish and offer services to customers without risk of the landowner screwing them over.
The landing fee then becomes a combination of the regulated runway fee + the optional unregulated facility fee that you are visiting / need services from.
The FBOs pay a price regulated rent to the landowner. The landowner cannot discriminate and suddenly say they don’t want the aero club there, for example.
If we don't take part in protecting GA access to infrastructure, the smaller aerodromes will be built over, the larger aerodromes will have exorbitant handling fees and awkward procedures, and airspace will be over-classified to Class A everywhere.
FLYER Club Member