BERLIN (AP) – Nine years late and well above its original budget, Berlin’s new airport nevertheless opened on Saturday with little fanfare as the aviation industry deals with the effect of the coronavirus pandemic.
The construction of Berlin’s Brandenburg Willy Brandt airport, named after former West German Chancellor, better known as BER, began in 2006 and was originally scheduled to open in October 2011, but a series of technical and planning disorders forced officials to leave six vacancies. . dates: the most embarrassing in 2012, just 4 weeks before the start of flights.
This prompted the assignment to the prestige of the national prank, as a succession of airport administrators fought unrest that included unrest with construction wiring and a complex chimney protection system.
“Finally, we can put our airport into service, finally,” said the airport’s CEO, Engelbert Luetke Daldrup, in a brief rite of openness with national and regional officials. “It was a long way. It wasn’t a simple road, everyone who’s here today knows it, so we’re not having a party today, we’re just opening up.
The airport charges about $7 billion, approximately 3 times what was originally planned. Although everything opens at a time when air traffic has been hampered by the pandemic, Germany will put into force a four-week ban on hotels that receive tourists from Monday as a component of transitory closure that also closes restaurants and bars.
The opening of Terminal 2 of the new airport has been postponed until early next year, as lately it is not required. Lutke Daldrup said making an investment at the airport would be successful in the long run and that “it will be a vital guarantee for the economic progression of the region. “
BER is located on the outskirts of Berlin’s city limits, with connections to the German capital and beyond from an exercise station below the main terminal. Its opening marks the end of the central but narrow Tegel Airport of former West Berlin, the busiest of the two small Cold War-era airports that have in the past built the reunified city.
The special flights of the cheap airline Easyjet and Lufthansa were the first to land at the new airport on Saturday, which begins a week of transition, with the last Tegel flight scheduled to depart on November 8 The old Schoenefeld airport in East Berlin, unlike the BER runways, is incorporated into the new airport as ‘terminal 5′”.
Tegel and Schoenefeld welcomed a total of 35. 6 million passengers last year, reaching Berlin in 3rd place in Germany, frankfurt and Munich centres.
The opening of the airport sparked protests from climate activists, many of whom climbed the roof of the main construction hours before the first flights landed, and police shot them.