Some of us will still remember the times when Berlin Schonefeld was Interflug’s home and Berlin Tegel, in the Western part of the divided city, was the airport of the free world. The well known TV tower in East Berlin was put there not least to have something that made approaches to Tegel a bit more of a challenge. Those times are now gone and Berlin is about to get a spanking new airport.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) was to be opened for business on 3 June but its opening has now been postponed and will not take place until after the summer holidays. The reason given is problems with the fire protection systems… Anyway, when it does open, it will mark a quantum leap of service improvement in the third largest aviation market in Germany behind Frankfurt and Munich and the 13th in Europe as a whole.
Building new airports in Europe is not exactly a passionate activity and had it not been for the federal capital that was basically without a decent airport for decades, Brandenburg itself may never have seen the light of day. Airports in Germany are not the favorites of a large section of the population as evidenced by the recent night-time restrictions placed on Frankfurt with other places coming under scrutiny also…
But Brandenburg will be serving the very heart of the country and that is a different matter altogether.
In recent years, old Schonefeld had become the Berlin destination of the low-fare airlines and it is perhaps a bit funny that it is this airport that has been developed into Berlin Brandenburg. The original 3000 meters long runway has been extended to 3600 and a new one, of 4000 meters length, has been added. Separated by 1900 meters the two runways are suitable for parallel, independent operations.
2011 saw an almost 8 % increase of passengers in the Berlin area over 2010 and the trend is expected to continue, so the capacity of those two runways will be more than needed.
The new terminal, composed of a central concourse and two piers aligned South and North, will have an initial capacity of 27 million passengers a year. This can be notched up to 45 million, the airport’s maximum design capacity, if the two satellite terminals for which space has been foreseen, are added. These may in fact be needed in a hurry since the two Berlin airports saw 24.03 million passengers passing through their gates in 2011.
When the airport opens, there will be 85 remote parking positions and 25 jetways.
The designers of the terminal went for clean lines and spaces that will make it easy to find things even for less experienced travelers. This will be important if we consider that some 80 airlines will be serving more than 150 destinations from Brandenburg… Passengers will have around 150 concessions to spend their money in before departure, not to mention getting bogged down in shopping instead of going to their gates.
Apart from being an ultramodern airport from every conceivable aspect, Berlin Brandenburg has at least two other very important facts going for it. One of these is its location which makes it an almost ideal airport for transfer from long-haul flights to just about anywhere in Europe. The other is its capacity to grow. With practically all the other major hubs, with the possible exception of Paris CDG, near saturation, being able to grow just ahead of demand is a huge competitive advantage.
In the cut-throat world of airports, BER will certainly be one to reckon with.
