Berlin Brandenburg Airport: the story of an industrial accident

If all goes well, the new Berlin airport, named Willy-Brandt Brandenburg, should open its doors on October 31 and welcome its first flights on November 7. If everything goes well. Because the story of this airport can make you smile or cry and is a blow to the image of rigor and quality associated with Germany.

An airport for a reunited Berlin

At the time of the Cold War Berlin was served by two airports: Tegel in the west and Schönefeld in the east. With the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, the need for a unique and modern airport was quickly felt and it was in 2006 that the city announced the construction of a new airport for an expected opening in 2011.

Then the financial crisis of 2008 hit and the contractor went bankrupt. Changes were also made to the building’s own plans because the architect did not like stores and had designed a terminal with as few stores as possible. Now it is stores that makes an airport live, so everything has to be revised and floors are added to the original plans.

The opening date is therefore postponed to 2012. A lesser evil, one might think.

In 2012, a few months before the deadline, everything seems to be on track and the relocation of the infrastructure from Tegel and Schönefeld to Brandenburg is planned and ready to be carried out, as the idea in such cases is of course to avoid having several airports in use simultaneously.

Corruption, errors and defects

During the first preliminary tests, it was realized that the check-in counters could not handle as many people as expected. There is even talk of installing additional counters outside under tents! These counters would have been used by second-tier airlines, while the local ones, led by Lufthansa and Air Berlin, would have used the normal counters.

But it won’t come to that because another problem will delay the opening of the airport: smoke detectors that are not only defective but installed without a permit.

In addition to this, over 90,000 meters of cable were incorrectly installed, 4,000 doors were incorrectly numbered, and the escalators were too short.

For the anecdote the system had been conceived to draw the smoke downwards, under the ground of the airport whereas as everyone knows the smoke goes up. Everything has to be changed and the opening rested in 2013. It will later be realized that the person who designed the fire detection system was not qualified to do so.

In the end, more than half a million problems are identified and need to be solved.

When the authorities are obstinate

Would it have been easier to give up everything at that moment? Certainly, but after having already invested, it’s hard to give up everything. So the authorities will persist.

Every month between the works, the maintenance and the security of the site it is 10M€ which are thus swallowed.

Many heads then fall for corruption, causing a certain amount of uncertainty at the head of the project.

Finally it is the date of 2014 that is considered. A new call for tenders was published to take over the construction site, but no answer satisfied the authorities.

At the end of 2015 the airport is still not open and continues to sink astronomical amounts of money to be maintained.

In 2016 it appears that the airport will not be able to obtain certification for its metro station within the necessary timeframe. The opening is postponed to 2017.

An airport without a resident airline

Bad luck, 2017 is the year of the bankruptcy of Air Berlin, which wanted to make Berlin its hub, while having already hubs in Frankfurt and Munich Lufthansa sees Berlin as an end of line airport. It is a headache for the operator because even if Lufthansa will take over some of Air Berlin’s routes, such a large airport without an airline acting as a hub makes no economic sense. So much so that it was considered to keep Tegel for medium-haul and point-to-point flights, which would have been more convenient for passengers but an even worse economic disaster.

In the meantime, new safety tests were carried out and defects were discovered in the fire detectors and sprinklers! An opening between 2019 and 2022 is announced.

During all this time to keep the information screens working they were made to broadcast information about flights from other airports. In 2018 these screens are burned out and to be replaced for 550 000€.

What to do with a ghost airport?

Throughout this period, the airport has been used in innovative ways: paid bicycle tours, organization of running races (half-marathon), it has even been used as a car storage area by Volkswagen.

And hallelujah, last week Lufthansa announced that it will operate from the new airport from November 2020. Will this time be the right one? It seems so, but we had so many surprises with Brandenburg that we are waiting to see it with our eyes.

In the end, Berlin Brandenburg Airport will have cost 6 billion euros instead of the planned 4.

Photo : Willy-Brandt Berlin-Brandebourg Airport by Christian Heinz via Shutterstock