Berlin Airport Opens After Delays and Budget Issues
The Berlin Brandenburg Airport opens after years of delays. (Pixabay)
After experiencing nine years of delays and going over three times the initial budget, Berlin Brandenburg Airport opened on October 31 in the Schönefeld district of Germany’s capital. The airport will be the third-largest in the country after Frankfurt and Munich and will replace one of Berlin’s two previous airports, Berlin Tegel.
Bureaucratic and construction challenges marred the project since construction began in 2006. Difficulties first arose in 2003, when the German government’s efforts to find a private contractor to build the airport failed. The states of Berlin and Brandenburg then decided to complete the project themselves.
The project’s initial opening date was October 30, 2011, but when construction began, the project immediately ran into logistical challenges and disputes with nearby residents, who complained about the prospect of noise.
After three more years of delays, the board of directors in charge of the airport’s construction relieved Berlin Brandenburg Airport CEO Rainer Schwarz of his duties in 2013, while simultaneously announcing that the airport no longer had a definitive opening date.
In 2015, Imtech Deutschland—the company responsible for many elements of the airport’s construction—filed for bankruptcy and consequently sparked further delays. The fire safety system, which failed to detect smoke and trigger alarms properly, became the main issue that delayed construction.
Additionally, investigators accused Imtech of bribing airport workers to file fraudulent invoices in a major corruption scandal; the company intended to increase their profits from the airport construction through bribes.
After the second terminal began construction in 2018, the recently appointed head of the project Engelbert Lütke-Daldrup gave an updated opening date of October 2020. In April, all building permits received approval, which gave the airport the final green light it needed to open.
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly reduced the passenger load for the airport, allowing it to open with less stress on its terminals. On October 31, two flights on Lufthansa and Easyjet began the transition in air traffic from the now-shuttered Tegel Airport to the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport before being completed on November 8.
With the airport now opening in the middle of a pandemic, Lütke-Daldrup said that the airport will likely not reach pre-pandemic passenger levels for another three or four years, but that he is relieved that the airport has finally opened.