All you need to know about ‘cursed’ Berlin Airport

Nine years late and eye-watering over budget, Berlin’s new international airport will finally open on Saturday. The new hub called Berlin Brandenburg Airport(BER) has become an embarrassing dent in Germany’s reputation for efficiency and for that, it is known as a ‘cursed’ airport, reported news agency AFP.

“We are ready for take-off!” insists the management team at the airport, set to replace the German capital’s aging Tegel and Schoenefeld airports. It is located in the south-east of the capital and was originally due to open in 2011. Now it is opening its doors in the middle of the worst crisis the aviation industry has ever seen, as COVID-19 restrictions continue to suffocate air travel.

The curse does not seem to go away even during the opening: pressure group Extinction Rebellion is planning acts of “civil disobedience” on an opening day to protest against the impact of aviation on global warming. “We will simply open, we will not have a party,” according to Engelbert Luetke Daldrup, president of the airport’s management company.

Lufthansa and EasyJet will be the first two airlines to touch down on the tarmac of what will be Germany’s third-largest airport, after Frankfurt and Munich.

All you need to know about the airport

1. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, city authorities wanted a new airport to be a symbol of a country reunited after decades of the Cold War. Aside from the technical BER initials, the airport carries the name of the former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who opened relations with the eastern bloc in the early 1970s.
2. At reunification in 1990, the German capital had three middle-ranking airports — Tegel and Tempelhof (closed in 2008) in the west and Schoenefeld in the former communist east.
3. In 1996, local and national authorities began drawing up plans for a new airport fit to rival international hubs such as Frankfurt and Munich, with a planned opening date of 2011.
4. In 2010, the first signs of turbulence appeared. Project managers said stricter European aviation safety regulations and the bankruptcy of a planning company meant they had to delay the opening by a year. From then on, the opening was repeatedly postponed.
5. In 2012, construction was suddenly halted after a fire safety system was found to be defective. An inauguration ceremony planned only a few weeks later with Chancellor Angela Merkel was hastily cancelled.
6. The airport’s price tag had rocketed from 1.7 billion euros ($2 billion) to more than 6.5 billion euros ($7.6 billion) by 2020, bringing an extra burden on a city already heavily in debt.
7. The hub was to have a capacity of 27 million passengers a year, increasing to 33 million with the opening of a second terminal a few years later. Yet in 2019, 35 million passed through Berlin’s two airports. Authorities decided that Schoenefeld, the unloved communist-era airport next to the new site, will continue to operate as BER’s Terminal 5.