[ad_1]
BERLIN – Germany will breathe a collective sigh of relief on October 31 when the new Berlin airport finally opens. It will be nothing short of a nightmare coming to an end.
Plagued by numerous construction problems, frequent address changes, and repeated reopening postponements, the airport had become something of a bad joke. German engineering prowess, often regarded as the best in the world, became the subject of ridicule in Berlin.
As a fitting end to this nearly 15-year build test, the opening now falls amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Sarcastic commentators are already wondering if the airport is necessary. In fact, the number of passengers has dropped so drastically that they could easily be handled by the old Tegel airport.
Tegel, better known by its TXL code, had been built in the 1970s when West Berlin was still a walled city. After the unification and the transfer of the German capital from Bonn to Berlin, it quickly became clear that the city would need a modern airport capable of handling the increasing air traffic.
In the early 1990s, Berlin had four airports – Tegel, Tempelhof, Gatow, and Schönefeld – scattered across a city that was once divided into four sectors, each controlled by one of the occupying forces.
For a city with just four million people, this air travel mess had to end.
Planning for the new airport began in 1996, after a site was allocated next to the former center of East Germany in Schönefeld, a suburb of Berlin.
Construction began in 2006 and the opening was originally scheduled for November 2011. However, constant problems with the smoke control system and thousands of other technical problems pushed the official launch of the airport almost every year forward.
BER, short for what will become Berlin-Brandenburg’s new Willy Brandt Airport, saw executives come and go. Some of them were hired as soccer coaches to prevent a struggling team from being relegated to a lower division. Each new executive brought a new team, further adding to the chaos.
In 2017, Engelbert Lütke Daldrup took over as CEO. A calm and seasoned construction expert revealed in an interview with The Straits Times his secret to the success of the project: “I stopped changing plans. I ordered that we stick to what we have and that I will not allow modifications.”
Mr Lütke Daldrup put an end to the constant introduction of new ideas and adaptations which, in the past, had led to a flood of consequential changes.
As a result, the new 2020 airport may not reflect the latest in airport technology, but at least it will work.
The drills have been going on since July, when batches of 400 volunteers from the general public showed up every Tuesday and Thursday for a user simulation of a normal business day at BER.
Picking up suitcases, pushing strollers, queuing at check-in counters, uncovering billboards, and finding their way to the gates of the new terminal, fake, masked, and advised passengers to stay clear of each other, put airport operations at a premium real-time testing.
For BER, the Covid-19 pandemic may even turn into a blessing in disguise. The number of passengers in Berlin has now dropped to a quarter of the 110.00 regular travelers landing and departing from one of Berlin’s airports.
On opening day later this month, the new airport will not see a large influx of passengers, but only a modest number. With dozens of observers waiting for the next bug to surface, this takes some of the pressure off.
The slow start will also mitigate one of the key criticisms: that the airport is too small to handle all the passengers who are now redirected from Tegel in the north of the city to BER in the south. Since no one knows when passenger numbers will rise back to pre-Covid-19 levels, this debate has also died down.
The hope that the airport will soon become a major European hub no longer exists. Prospective plans for new terminals to expand the airport will not be referenced anytime soon.
“All arrivals and departures for a day fit on one screen,” said BER Operations Manager Patrick Muller, with visibly mixed feelings.
Although he is glad that the project is finally seeing the light, he admits: “Of course, this is not at the level of the airports in Dubai or Istanbul, but BER will be modern and it will work well.”
However, the prolonged turbulence in the construction of the BER has left a mark.
In Germany, other large construction projects such as the Stuttgart station and the Hamburg Philharmonic have also proved difficult to complete, either due to technological hurdles, exaggerated costs or massive objections from citizens’ initiatives.
Berlin’s new airport is now 4 billion euros over budget (the total is more than 6 billion euros), and this is not even the end of the line.
With revenues under water due to Covid-19, it will be many more years until the new airport has made up for the billions accumulated due to lengthy construction. “I hope it takes up to three to four years for us to reach the pre-coronavirus level of business,” Lütke Daldrup said. In addition, BER has already requested 300 million euros more in taxpayer money to keep the new airport afloat.
While BER will finally celebrate its inauguration, Tegel’s days are numbered. The hexagon-shaped and easily accessible airport is loved by many Berliners. With its distinctive patina, it reflects the time when life in Berlin was cozy and quiet.
A referendum to keep Tegel open even won the support of the majority of Berliners. However, the city government put the vote aside. Local politicians wanted a single prestigious airport. Now this new airport just has to deliver.
[ad_2]
