From the DW:
“Berlin's
new airport finally opens: A story of failure and embarrassment”
Conception to
operation has taken 30 years, with seven missed opening dates — rather than a
symbol of a revitalized German capital, the new airport has been one of
Germany's most glaring public scandals in recent memory. June 3, 2012 was the
date slated for the opening of the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport (BER). It was not
the first, but the most memorable. So great was the anticipation, public
broadcaster rbb planned to go live for 24 hours covering it. So great was the
disaster thereafter, the German satire site, The Postillon, proposed a new
grammatical form for discussing the airport's conditional opening — an event
repeatedly kicked down the tarmac never to actually happen. Just before the
opening date, inspectors reported some 120,000 defects, including fire safety
issues, automatic doors that didn't open and sagging roofs. Around 170,000
kilometers (106,000 miles) of cable installed in and around the airport were
found to be dangerously wired. Some lights couldn't turn on; others couldn't
turn off.
It has taken
more than nine years, and a series of well-paid airport company managers, to
sort out the problems at Berlin's new international airport — also called Willy
Brandt Airport, after the late leader of West Berlin and then West Germany. And
now that airport officials say it is ready for takeoff, few airplanes are
likely to do so. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown the airline and travel
industries into disarray. Through August, Berlin's air passenger traffic is
down nearly 70% from the same period last year.
Too small —
and already bankrupt In terms of capacity, that may be good news, even if
it's for the wrong reason. BER was designed to handle 27 million passengers a
year. In 2019, more than 35 million people passed through Tegel and Schönefeld,
Berlin's existing overburdened airports, which are set to respectively close
and merge with BER. Pandemic fears aside, tourism analysts project steady
growth in visitors to the German capital. An expansion is already in the
works to meet the extra demand, should it ever return. That could cost another
€2.3 billion ($2.7 billion) by 2030, or about as much as the entire project's
original budget. Actual costs stand at over €7 billion ($8.2 billion), a bill
shared between the states of Berlin and Brandenburg and Germany's federal
government. Together they back the FBB, the company that operates Berlin's
airports and has overseen construction of the new one. The delays and
cost overruns have dovetailed with the pandemic losses. Without an additional
€300 million in grants and loans from the state, Germany's Finance Ministry
reported in September that the FBB would be bankrupt before the airport opens
on October 31. It may need more than €1 billion over the next few years to stay
aloft. If the state does not want to find a way to privatize the company, even
partially, those costs remain the taxpayers' to cover.
Inauspicious
start The airport was meant to stand for everything Berlin has hoped to
become — a reunited global city worthy of serving as the capital of one of the
world's largest economies. Instead, the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport has come to
represent everything Berlin has been long mocked for: inept public
administration and financial mismanagement, incapable of seeing big projects
through. The project got off to a rocky start. First dreamed up in 1990,
shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, it took six
years to settle on a spot to build. The official groundbreaking didn't happen
for another decade. Private investors scattered when their risk alarms flashed
red, leaving the state alone to finance and oversee construction. Even the
airport's original code, BBI (Berlin-Brandenburg International), had to be
changed because an airport in India was already using it. Whether due to
new requests from the state or updated safety regulations from the European
Union, the airport's architects had to regularly amend their plans. In 2011 one
of the project's main contractors went under. More bankruptcies would follow.
In his book "Black Box BER," chief architect Meinhard von Gerkan
blamed political pressure to get the job done, despite "protest from
project management." He and others have accused the FBB of trying to cover
up problems, manipulating reports before they reached the oversight board,
which was at the time led by then Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, a big-time
airport advocate.
Things fall
apart Wowereit had resigned from the oversight board by the end of 2014.
Gerkan and his team were sent packing. Their replacements searched in vain for
the building plans, only for some of them to turn up in a dumpster, an incident
that triggered a police investigation. Engelbert Lütke Daldrup, a mid-level
career civil servant, has been FBB chairman since 2017 — the fourth person to
fill that role since the airport's initial delayed opening. Aside from
public shaming, three parliamentary committee investigations along with years
of general uproar and eye-rolling have led to no consequences for anyone
involved in the decades-long, state-funded debacle. The fiasco may not
end with BER's opening on November 1. Critics wonder whether an airport
designed in the early 2000s is compatible with the technology and travel habits
of 2020 and beyond. Germany's rail company, Deutsche Bahn, has no
immediate plans to offer a high-speed rail connection, as other major German
airports enjoy. Just one long-distance train will stop at BER; otherwise,
passengers will have to take commuter or regional rail into Berlin and change
at the central station for onward travel — or go the climate-unfriendly route
by connecting to a domestic flight.
Government
officials including Chancellor Angela Merkel may face some travel
inconvenience, too. When Germany moved its capital from Bonn to Berlin after
reunification, its fleet of aircraft did not come along, due to lack of space
at Berlin's smaller airports. BER was meant to change that, but Germany's armed
forces, the Bundeswehr, says there is only enough space to keep seven of its 19
planes there. The rest will have to keep flying in, empty, from the
Cologne-Bonn Airport — on the other side of the country — to pick up VIP
passengers, much to the dismay of climate activists and government accountants.
The most airport investigators and oversight authorities have been able to
conclude from years of setbacks and unmet promises is that the BER epic is a
top-to-bottom, start-to-finish failure. Many of those responsible for it will
be on hand to celebrate its unfashionably late opening. It may be a more muted
moment for those close to the airport's famous namesake, Willy Brandt. While a
spokesman for the Willy Brandt Foundation told DW it welcomes the airport's
opening and its association with the late chancellor, his children reached for
comment preferred to stay silent.
^ So much for
the idea of German ingenuity and on-time performance. The idea for the Berlin
Brandenburg Airport was created shortly after German Reunification in October
1990 when the Capital of Reunited Germany moved from Bonn to Berlin. It has
taken 30 years to finally open a modern airport in Berlin. Before today there
were 3 other airports serving Berlin:
Berlin Tegel
Airport (1948- November 8, 2020) is a soon-to-be-closed airport. It was created
in 90 days by the US Military during the 1948-1949 Berlin Blockade and helped
end the Soviet and East German Communist starvation of West Berlin then in
reunified Berlin since 1990.
Berlin
Schönefeld Airport (1934- October 25, 2020) was used heavily by the Nazis from
1934-1945 and then by the Soviet Union and the East Germans from 1945-1990 and
the in reunified Berlin from 1990-2020.
Berlin
Tempelhof Airport (1923-2008) was used heavily by the Nazis from 1933-1945 and
then by the US Military from 1945-1990 - including the 1948-1949 Berlin Blockade
and helped end the Soviet and East German Communist starvation of West Berlin
then in reunified Berlin from 1990-2008.
It seems that
the Germans should have asked the US Military to build the new airport since we
were able to build an airport in 90 days that is still in use today – until November
8, 2020. That airport may have been built in 90 days but lasted for 72 years. ^
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