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Saturday October 31, shortly after 2:00 pm: An Airbus 320 Neo of the British low-cost airline EasyJet lands on the north runway of Schönefeld airport. Like a dozen times before. Still, the flight was something special. You could almost have had the feeling that this was the happy return from a mission to Mars to Earth.
Because for the first time the machine no longer docked at the old Schönefeld airport, but at Terminal 1 of the capital’s BER airport. On board EasyJet CEO Johann Lundgren, greeted by airport manager Engelbert Lütke Daldrup, who acted as chair of a festival committee, so to speak, made up of Berlin’s ruling mayor Michael Müller, the prime minister of Brandenburg , Dietmar Woidke, and the Federal Minister of Transport, Andreas Scheuer.
Five minutes later, the second plane, also an Airbus 320 Neo, landed alone from Lufthansa and with its CEO Karsten Spohr on board. The machine had a somewhat longer flight distance behind it than the Airbus EasyJet, which, coming from Tegel, had not even approached its normal flight altitude.
Spectacular proximity in the air
The Lufthansa plane departed on time at 12:50 pm Munich, with more activity than party atmosphere on board. About ten minutes before landing, the EasyJet plane crossed the flight path in spectacular proximity. German air traffic control did not allow any more choreography. No one wanted to risk something else happening in the remaining ten minutes of the flight through thick clouds. So the planes landed one after the other instead of in parallel on the two runways.
The salute from the two planes was muffled. Several hundred BER employees were a bit lost on the runway and behind the windows of the main dock. A fire truck sprayed the common welcome fountain in the world of aviation. No trumpets, no fireworks, no storms of applause.
When all the passengers were on board, Lütke Daldrup was already at the microphone, tormenting himself with a short opening speech. “We don’t have a party,” he said, “we just open up.”
“Only open” is in times of pandemic, shortly before the start of the new closure, but not so easy. In the departures area of the main terminal, national and foreign journalists were lost, employees of the BER team distributed gummy bears and looked good under their masks in the face of all the sadness.
After the security checks at the gate, where the guests of honor waited 1.5 meters for the arrival of the two planes, there was hardly more movement. And all the speakers tried not to waste too much time on the blunder of the past or even to discuss the BER of a billion bass.
Lütke Daldrup and the owners of the capital’s airport want to forget the abbreviation BER, which has become synonymous with construction and planning setbacks, scandals and economic holes. You mean the Berlin Brandenburg airport “Willy Brandt”.
“The success story begins now,” said Brandenburg Prime Minister Woidke. And the chairman of the BER supervisory board, Rainer Bretschneider, asked to join forces. Spohr, in turn, spoke of a historic day for Lufthansa. And the federal minister of transport, Scheuer, said that we simply have to start with BER, “towards a new economic miracle.”
Meanwhile, protesters dressed as penguins held a small sit-in in the arrivals area of the terminal: a group of predominantly young climate activists beat drums and chanted that “the coolest birds stay on the ground.” If it were up to the protesters, it would be better if BER closed again immediately after opening. “Flying”, they say, is “the most damaging means of transport for the climate and the most unfair”.
