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No kidding: BER is ready. And finally in operation. The first two planes landed at the new Berlin airport on Saturday. However, a bit of bad luck was not avoided.
The BER airport in the capital of Berlin remains true to its reputation at the opening: although the arrival of the first two planes on Saturday was thought through to the last detail, in the end there was one last little mishap.
Anyway, this time it wasn’t the humans’ fault, it was the weather. Instead of landing on both runways in parallel as planned, the Easyjet planes, which took off in Berlin-Tegel, and Lufthansa, which took off from Munich, had to land one after the other on the north runway. The reason: poor visibility, which prevented the pilots from seeing each other in the air and being able to coordinate the simultaneous “touchdown” for the beautiful images.
However, that remained the only flaw in the opening ceremony, which according to BER chief Engelbert Lütke Daldrup (“We just open up”), it should be none. The security check on the guests worked, the speeches were seated, the symbolic press of the red button worked. The environmental protesters in the terminal building certainly couldn’t interrupt or even prevent the airport from starting. with an outage at the old Schönefeld airport.
The opening of the BER is a historic moment
The Berlin miracle is complete. The opening of BERIn view of the history of the building, it can be said that it is a historical moment.
Applause at the start: Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr (from left), Federal Minister of Transport Andreas Scheuer, airport manager Engelbert Lütke Daldrup, Brandenburg Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke, Easyjet CEO, Johan Lundgren, and the Mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller. (Source: Tobias Schwarz / dpa)
After a seemingly endless series of construction and planning errors, with the smoke extraction system, with the wrong plugs, Berlin has lost its “sanctuary”. Nine years late, after a total of five postponed opening dates, the often mocked broken airport at the gates of the German capital has finally become a true airport.
Since initial planning in the 1990s, the construction of the BER has eaten up more than 6.5 billion euros instead of the 2.5 billion euros once estimated. Money, most of which comes from the three owners of the operating company, the federal government, Berlin and Brandenburg, and ultimately the taxpayer.
“Frustrating setbacks”
But no one wanted to talk about it on Saturday. “Today is not the right time to talk about costs,” said Federal Transportation Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU). And the Brandenburg and Berlin heads of government Dietmar Woidke and Michael Müller (both from the SPD), as well as the airport chief Lütke Daldrup limited themselves to a few words of hindsight, only briefly speaking of “frustrating setbacks” and days that ” they were desperate. ” .
Welcome fountain: One after the other instead of parallel, the first two machines had to land at BER, then they rolled towards each other in the direction of the terminal. (Source: obias Schwarz / dpa)
Rather, they were targeting the good prospects of the airport. To the fact that Berlin “and all of East Germany” finally have a presentable airport with BER. Scheuer even promised to “do everything in his power” to make it an “international center.”
However, this is likely to remain a dream for the future for the foreseeable future. The crisis in the crown is putting too much pressure on air traffic and therefore also on the BER. The pandemic made it much easier to move the entire flight infrastructure from Tegel Airport, which is popular in Berlin, to BER; after all, there were hardly any passengers there who should have been considered.
Airport employees are again threatened with short-term jobs
At the same time, Lütke Daldrup emphasized on Saturday, the entire industry is facing considerable problems due to Corona. Only in the middle of the decade was it to be expected that passenger numbers would fully recover and reach the pre-crisis level, only then could “black numbers” be expected.
Protest against BER: environmental activists demonstrate in front of the terminal on the opening day. (Source: Michele Tantussi / Reuters)
For one thing, the BER is not too small from the start, as has been pointed out repeatedly in previous years. On the other hand, the operator could soon run out of money now that the airport is finally online. Therefore, only at the beginning of last week Scheuer had spoken of more millions of aid for the airport company.
The lock light is likely to make the situation worse again. This fits in with what t-online learned Saturday from airport company circles: Now that BER is online, when the stressful weeks of preparation are over, most employees will be sent back to work on reduced time from from December.
