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Friday, September 25, 2020
With a delay of nine years, the new airport in the capital of Berlin will start operating at the end of October. Despite the timely completion, the opening of Terminal 2 will have to wait. This is due to the crisis of the crown.
Terminal 2 (T2) at Berlin Airport was also completed, which was scheduled to open on October 31. However, due to the low number of passengers in the Corona crisis, it will not be used initially.
“Therefore, FBB will probably not put T2 into operation until the 2021 summer flight program,” said Berlin-Brandenburg Airport Company (FBB) director Engelbert Lütke Daldrup. “Until then we can save half a million euros a month. If the number of passengers increases again, Terminal 2 will be ready to operate in a very short time.”
Unlike the breakdown of the main terminal of T1, the construction of T2 was not carried out by the airport company itself, but by a general contractor, Zech Bau. Until recently, it was not clear whether the building, which is designed to handle around 6 million additional passengers per year, will be ready in time for the opening.
T1 has a capacity of 27 million passengers per year. If the airport had opened at full capacity and without T2, it would have been tight. Last year, Berlin airports handled around 35 million passengers. In the Corona crisis, this number fell dramatically.
Originally, BER was supposed to open in 2011. However, numerous planning errors, construction defects and technical problems delayed completion. Escalators that are too short, lights that won’t turn off, and room chaos due to incorrect numbering were just a few of the issues. However, the biggest difficulty was fire protection. Over the years a tangle of cables was rebuilt and untied.
