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Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) was due to open its doors on June 3, 2012. It was not the first time the project was not completed on time, but this time it was the most memorable.
How long was the wait for the airport to open? – a public broadcaster rbb I was ready to broadcast all opening and airport work live 24 hours a day. The same great catastrophe came after that. German satire site The Postillon has announced that the airport opening is a permanent event that will never happen.
Just before the opening date, inspectors surveying the airport found more than 120,000. various defects, including fire protection issues, automatic doors that just didn’t form, and a sloping roof … Not to mention that some 170,000 kilometers of cable installed in and around the airport were found to be poorly or even dangerously connected. Some lights did not turn on, others did not turn off.
More than nine years have passed, it took several highly paid airport executives to solve all the problems at the new Berlin International Airport, also known as Willy Brandt Airport, on behalf of the late West Berlin and then West German director.
Of course, now is definitely not the best time for a new airport, as probably only a few planes will take off here. The coronavirus pandemic has rocked the travel and airline industries. In August, passenger traffic in Berlin had fallen by almost 70% compared to the same period last year.
Not big enough and too expensive
BER was designed to serve more than 27 million. passengers per year. And it is not as much as it seems.
In 2019, the Berlin Schönefeld and Tegel airports, which will be closed and merged with BER in the near future, served more than 35 million passengers. passengers. Despite fears of a pandemic, tourism analysts predict a steady increase in visitors to the German capital.
The airport is already being developed to meet additional passenger demand should you ever return after the pandemic. And that could cost another $ 2.3 billion. by 2030, or roughly the same as the initial budget for the entire airport project. But it certainly grew.
The actual cost of the entire airport is more than 7 billion. The euro is a shared account between the states of Berlin and Brandenburg and the German federal government. At the same time, they support FBB, the company that manages Berlin’s airports and oversees the construction of the new one.
In the absence of an additional € 300 million in grants and loans from the state due to the coronavirus pandemic, the German Finance Ministry announced in September that the FBB could go bankrupt soon. More than a billion euros may be needed in the next few years for the company to survive. If the state does not find a way to privatize the company, even in part, these costs will continue to be borne by the taxpayer.
Inconsistent start
The airport would become a symbol of what Berlin wanted to become, a reborn global city worthy of being the capital of one of the world’s largest economies. Instead, Brandenburg Airport represents what Berlin has long scoffed at: shortcomings in public administration, financial mismanagement, the inability to carry out big projects.
The very beginning of the project did not promise a successful start. The new airport was first dreamed of in 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany. However, it took up to six years for the construction site to be selected. And until construction began, and another decade.
Private investors scattered, hardly feeling the risk of not finishing, leaving the state alone to finance and supervise construction. Even the original airport code BBI (Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport) had to be changed because the airport in India had already used it.
Whether due to new requests from the state or updated security rules from the European Union, the airport’s architects had to regularly change plans to meet established standards. The initial opening in October 2011 had to be postponed for eight months, mainly due to the bankruptcy of one of the main contractors of the project. Later there were more bankruptcies.
In his book Black Box BER, Meinhard von Gerkan, the airport’s chief architect, accused him of political pressure that prevented him from doing the job properly. He also accused the airport’s management company, FBB, of trying to hide the problems and manipulate the messages before they reached the supervisory commission, then headed by the then mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit.
In May 2012, a few weeks before the planned opening of the airport, BER was not authorized. K. Wowereit resigned from the Supervisory Commission until the end of 2014. Gerkan and his team also had to carry things.
Scanpix / SIPA Photo / Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)
The staff who replaced them searched in vain for plans for the new airport, which was still under construction, as only a few of them were found in the trash. A police investigation was launched into the incident.
Yet without public embarrassment, investigations by three parliamentary committees, as well as years of turmoil, no one involved in the decades-long state-funded failure has had consequences.
The fiasco is not over yet
However, the airport fiasco with the opening on October 31 may not end. Critics are considering whether the airport, designed in 2000, will be compatible with modern technology and travel habits in 2020 and beyond.
The epic BER is a top-down flop, start to finish.
The German railway company Deutsche Bahn does not intend to offer high-speed trains in the near future, as other large German airports do. Only a long-distance train will stop at BER; otherwise, passengers will need to travel by suburban or regional train to Berlin and transfer at Central Station to travel further afield.
Government officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, may also experience inconvenience when traveling. When Germany moved its capital from Bonn to Berlin after the merger, its fleet did not move here due to lack of space at Berlin’s smaller airports.
BER should have changed that, but the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, say there are only enough seats at the airport on seven of its 19 planes.
Many researchers and airport supervisors have only been able to conclude, after many years of failures and broken promises, that the BER epic is a top-down failure, from start to finish. Many of those responsible for this will be able to celebrate its old-fashioned delayed opening.
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