András Németh

It was meant to be a symbol of German unification, but one might think of a horse veterinarian from Berlin’s new airport, Willy Brandt / Brandenburg Airport, which opened on Saturday. And the vomit curve was not mentioned.

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In 2012, as a member of a group of journalists, I was able to visit the new Berlin airport, which “will open soon”, Brandenburg, which was scheduled to replace the three airports in the capital of reunified Germany, Schönefeld, Tempelhof and Tegel. “Pronto” turned into an eight-year slip, with six opening dates announced, while costs soared by € 4 billion. The seventh date, named a year and a half ago, was October 31, 2020, and it was not yet known that a worse date could hardly have been chosen: international aviation had collapsed due to the coronavirus epidemic, and Germany was constantly adjusting measures that restrict the movement of people.

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The coronavirus only culminated in the riots, in the years of the slip, everything imaginable and unimaginable intervened in Germany. In 2010, the opening of 2011 was postponed due to the bankruptcy of one of the main contractors, the easy-to-read Planungsgemeinschaft Berlin-Brandenburg International. However, the 2012 date seemed feasible and there were already plans to relocate the infrastructure needed to run Schönefeld and Tegel air traffic in a matter of days. At that moment, however, like the lightning, the news came: the supply corridors were narrow and, what is more serious, there were serious failures in the fume extraction system, and in fact, it turned out that part of the system had been built without permission.

The next date was January 2013, but it soon became clear that none of that would happen. Some executives have been replaced, corruption investigations have been launched against others, and the former Brandenburg technical director, for example, has been accused of accepting bribes of 680,000 euros. It also happened in 2013 that we had not been able to turn off the lights at the airport for days, when the t-shirts and mugs with this inscription appeared: It would be easier to move all of Berlin to a working airport.

The airport also didn’t open in 2014, but it turned out that Alfredo di Mauro, the airport’s fire protection system designer, was a technical draftsman, not a graduate engineer. However, he admitted that he had made a mistake. “When everyone thought I was an engineer, I did not object,” he confessed modestly. The price for the “mistakes” you make can only be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Is the jacket too big?

Another construction company also went bankrupt in 2015, and a year later it became clear that it would no longer be possible to obtain a permit to use the airport based on the redesigned plans until delivery scheduled for 2017. In turn, a project spokesperson was fired, who said in an interview that the design and construction were accompanied by fraud and bribery.

In 2017, one of the main hopeful users of Brandenburg airport, Air Berlin, threw in the towel – the company bankrupted several passengers – and although its rival Lufthansa, also German, promised to take over some of the flights, the uncertainty did not increase. the mood to build. Not only because Lufthansa said it would not make Berlin another transfer hub alongside Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Munich, so it became questionable whether Berlin needed such an airport.

In 2017, it also turned out that the redesigned smoke extraction system is not perfect either, and there are also problems with the fire alarms. At the time, the problems seemed so dire that many believed that before 2022, the damn airport would hardly open.

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Late and at the wrong time

Brandenburg has already opened, but there is not much to be thankful for either. Due to travel restrictions caused by the coronavirus, there is little traffic, it is typical for dozens of other airlines and temporarily removed wild birds to park at the airport. Employees have hardly even started work, already announcing that hundreds can only keep their jobs part-time and at significantly reduced pay. “The airport may finally be up and running, but there are hardly any flights, and that is just tragic,” Roland Böhm, director of the pre-opening testing organization, quoted as The Guardian.

The airport is unlikely to be a favorite with pilots and passengers: if an easterly wind is blowing and you have to climb high from the now transferred south runway, it should describe a 145-degree turn at a height of two hundred meters so as not to overload the nearby settlements. The maneuver is politely called LULUL 1B, but the pilots only call it vomit curve between themselves. They also add that not only will the pilots feel bad, they will also be among the passengers who will lift their stomachs.

Brandenburg Airport could currently accommodate 27 million passengers, only a fraction of that number will be available in the first months, and capacity is planned to reach 45 million by 2040. The new terminal, 11 km from Berlin, is 30 minutes by train from the center of the capital and has 14 trains per hour. There are 39 restaurants at the airport and the stores measure around 10,000 square meters. In the immediate vicinity of the airport is the 322-room Hotel Steigenberger, which can host conferences for up to 500 people. Even if there is no coronavirus epidemic.



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