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Friday, October 30, 2020
By Diana Dittmer and Martin Morcinek
It’s getting serious: BER really wants to open tomorrow. The start date had to be canceled six times in nine years. So finally a happy ending? The capital’s airport is finished, but there is no such thing as a happy ending.
There were many dark moments in BER’s breakdown history. However, this is probably the blackest of all – everything is meticulously prepared. In a night and fog action, aircraft, employees and service providers will move from Tegel Airport to the new BER capital airport in Schönefeld from June 2-3, 2012. The invitation cards for the grand party of inauguration on June 3. Air tickets with the abbreviation BER sold and printed. Then in early May, the shock.
Four weeks before the inauguration, officials noted that there were serious problems with fire protection. The appointment is canceled, it is the third time. Deepening chasms are opening up at the construction site: “The fact that I am not in a position to do something like this or sound the alarm in time has not been enough for my imagination,” then-ruling mayor Klaus Wowereit enraged. Which no one suspected at the time: In the years after that, it will take a lot more imagination to imagine the full scope of the construction disaster.
The supervisory board gave the signal to go in the summer of 2012, when it fired the chief technology officer and planner, including 300 engineers and architects, out of excitement and frustration. BER architect Meinhard von Gerkan warns of “total chaos” and is right with his prophecy. Without the documents and files in their office, those responsible are suddenly helpless. The result: the series of breakdowns does not stop in years and BER has to reverse three more opening dates. This fiasco should definitely not happen again under the command of the airport chief, Engelbert Lütke Daldrup, who will lead the BER project from March 2017.
On the seventh attempt, on October 31, it should work, a total of eight and a half years after the first failed opening date. At 2pm on Saturday, if nothing else comes up, a Lufthansa machine and an Easyjet will land on both runways at the same time and dock at the new Schönefeld terminal. Easyjet machines make their first take-offs the next day. So, what takes a long time will still be good after all?
The current mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller, is convinced that the history of suffering during construction will soon be forgotten. Maybe that’s the case, but that’s far from a good thing. Aviation has changed due to the coronavirus. BER is finally over, but hardly anyone flies in the pandemic. As a result, BER almost went bankrupt shortly before its opening. Only with a quick financial injection from shareholders (the states of Berlin and Brandenburg each have a 37 percent stake, the federal government has 26 percent) could this hard landing be prevented in the final meters before the opening. Over the years, the airport’s costs have risen to a good six billion euros, the planners had estimated at two billion. The taxpayer pays the majority.
Airport manager Lütke Daldrup is not in the mood for a big party in Berlin. Because the hanging game continues. After countless bankruptcies, bad luck and setbacks, including a gigantic cost explosion, the end of which is not yet in sight, BER is flying straight into an uncertain future. It is the great tragedy at the end.
