Berlin’s delayed airport to finally take off
berlin — After 14 years of construction and six delayed openings, Berlin’s new airport is due to welcome its first passengers today. But the timing could not be worse.
The Covid-19 pandemic has plunged the global aviation industry into its deepest ever crisis, and recovery is not expected for at least a couple of years.
That has left the new airport, originally called Berlin Brandenburg Airport but now known by its code BER, looking for extra funds to help pay its debts.
Built on the site of Schoenefeld airport in former East Berlin, BER has been beset by problems. The construction planning company went bankrupt; fire doors, cabling and sprinklers had faults; and costs ballooned to €6 billion ($7.1 billion) from an initial budget of €2 billion.
The setbacks further dented Germany’s reputa
tion for efficiency following long delays on other high-profile projects, such as the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg. Economists have come to describe Berlin’s state-owned airport operator, Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg, as a financial black hole.
At the end of 2019, FBB owed banks and its owners — the German federal government and the states of Berlin and Brandenburg — €4.1 billion.
That compares with €416 million of revenues in 2019 from Schoenefeld and Tegel, Berlin’s existing two airports.
Even before the pandemic, BER wasn’t expected to deliver a big revenue boost, as it mainly replaces the two older airports.
But because of the Covid-19 crisis, BER CEO Engelbert Luetke Daldrup expects just 10 million passengers at Berlin’s airports this year, compared with 36 million last year and BER’s current capacity of 40 million. —