Cheers BHXDME but not sure on the point here ?
Those figures prove nothing in respect of MANs comparison with LHR, LGW both of which are capacity constrained and did not therefore suffer a massive increase and subsequent decrease on the way to those targets.
In addition a lot of new capacity /demand was added albeit in an indirect way by expansion in the South East by Stansted. Certainly pax coming into UK to visit London might now also use STN whereas before they had no choice but to use LHR/LGW.
If you have it, a better trend analysis might be to show those airports at their peak over this period which have sebsequently fallen back. I suspect MAN experienced the greatest year on year increase against its "own" figures followed sadly by an almost identical decline.
One of the most significant elements of your table is the one at the bottom, Liverpool.
I suspect that it was once viewed as irrelevent, perhaps maybe even a minor irritation by MAN but it is now on circa 5m. It has arguably taken market share from MAN, a factor which was possibly disguised but also disregarded in a rapidly rising market.
The "Liverpool" effect may also be significant in culled routes at MAN where margins have fallen because of new services from their.
Long Haul is not a factor here so would be interesting to see how much of our losses are made up be these...any figures anybody ?