The table gives information about how many people travelled using three main airports in Britain over a period of 5 years, from 1998 to 2003. Overall, it can be seen that all of three airports experienced upward trends. Additionally, both Gatwick and Stansted figures rose gradually, while the figure of Heathrow fluctuated remarkably.
At the beginning of the period, the proportion of Heathrow airport accounted for just over 27 million of travelers, after which, this number surged to 48.2 million in 2 years. Despite this rapid growth, there was a considerable fall to about 33 million, subsequently, the figure reached a peak at 45.6 million in 2003.
With respect to the other two airports, Gatwick and Stansted, their proportions started at 36.5 and 17.3 million, respectively. There had been a steady improvement in the proportion of Gatwick until 2002, when it rocketed to just over 69 million. As for Stansted, in the first half of the period, the number had experienced a significant rise, when it stopped increasing and plateaued at 43.3 million until the end of the period.
