Nouvel aéroport de Berlin

The delayed opening of Berlin’s new international airport could cause chaos for Luft—hansa and Air Berlin, both of which are trying to minimize the potentially dramatic consequences of the deferred launch of operations.

Berlin’s airport operator, Berliner Flughaefen, today announced it will be impossible to keep the projected June 3 opening date, with CEO Rainer Schwarz attributing the delay to the terminal’s fire protection system.

That system has failed recent tests, and further testing is needed to ensure everything works properly, Schwarz said.

Schwarz did not specify how extensive the delay will be, although Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit said later he hoped the airport could be opened in late August. Some industry sources are more skeptical.

Airlines doubt that fire protection is the only issue affecting the current schedule. “We have had to realize over the past few days and weeks and after several tests that there is a need to act on several fronts,” says Lufthansa. And while the airline is not officially specifying the issues, company sources indicate that there is a general uneasiness concerning the state of check-in facilities at the airport.

Schwarz stressed he is ready to stay in his position “in this difficult time.” However, Matthias Platzeck, the prime minister of the state of Brandenburg, noted that the delay was “more than a bad surprise” and that he was “very angry.” He said he expects a detailed plan by management by next Monday that specifies a recovery plan and new opening date.

Brandenburg is the airport’s largest shareholder along with the city of Berlin.

Berlin Brandenburg International (BBI) is intended to replace Berlin’s two existing airports Tegel and Schoenefeld. Tegel, the city’s main airport, is operating at capacity.

BBI originally was scheduled to open in November 2011, but terminal modifications caused a delay of six months.
This latest delay is a huge blow for both Lufthansa and Air Berlin. Lufthansa has planned to increase capacity 40% from Berlin, opening 50 more destinations, and was scheduled to base six more Airbus A320s in the country’s capital and introduce a low-fare scheme to stimulate demand. Air Berlin is currently building up a six-wave hub system and introducing long-haul services.

Now the question is whether those plans have to be pushed back many months. But both carriers cannot simply cancel the additional flights; they have already sold tens of thousands of tickets and now are no longer sure whether they will be able to fly the planned schedules.

Lufthansa says it plans to stick to its schedule and is securing additional slots at Tegel. However, even if it manages to get more slots on the already busy runways, it will be a huge challenge to process the additional passengers through Tegel’s crowded terminal.

Moving part of Lufthansa’s or another operator’s flights to Schoenefeld is an alternative, although that would incur huge costs that would likely have to be covered by the airport company.

Air Berlin says it is “very disappointed,” with CEO Hartmut Mehdorn noting that “this will cause huge logistics challenges and significant additional costs that we cannot yet calculate.”

(Reuters) - The
opening of Berlin's new airport will be delayed again to at least 2014,
more than two years later than originally planned after a series of
embarrassing setbacks to what was meant to be a flagship project, a
source familiar with the plans said.

Nearly a quarter of a century
after the Berlin Wall came down and 14 years after the government moved
back to Berlin as the unified capital, Germany is still struggling to open an international airport to replace two from its Cold War past.
The
opening of the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport had been re-scheduled to
October 2013, after already being postponed several times already over
the past year due to problems, for example, with its fire safety
systems.

German media have tracked down a list of tens of thousands of
technical problems. Among them: Officials can't even figure out how to
turn the lights off. Thousands of light bulbs illuminate the gigantic
main terminal and unused parking lots around the clock, a massive energy
and cost drain that appears to be the result of a computer system
that's so sophisticated it's almost impossible to operate.
Every
day, an empty commuter train rolls to the unfinished airport over an
eight-kilometer-long (five-mile) stretch to keep the newly-laid tracks
from getting rusty, another example of gross inefficiency. Meanwhile,
hundreds of freshly planted trees had to be chopped down because a
company delivered the wrong type of linden trees; several escalators
need to be rebuilt because they were too short; and dozen of tiles were
already broken before a single airport passenger ever stepped on them.
The
airport itself points to problems with the fire safety system as the
immediate cause of the delays: The fire safety system incorporates some
75,000 sprinklers, but computer programming glitches mean it's not clear
whether all of these sprinklers would spray enough water during a fire.
And the system's underground vent system, designed to suck away smoke,
isn't working. Here, again, technology's getting in the way: It's so
advanced that technicians can't figure out what's wrong with it.
Critics
say that the difficulties with handling today's complex technology have
been compounded by hasty, negligent work due to the intense time
pressures.
Underlying these problems appears to be a culture of political dishonesty.
"Many
politicians want prestigious large-scale projects to be inseparably
connected with their names," said Sebastian Panknin, a financial expert
with the Taxpayer's Association Germany. "To get these expensive
projects started, they artificially calculate down the real costs to get
permission from parliament or other committees in charge."
In
addition to that, politicians at the city, state and federal levels then
often come with extra demands once construction is underway, which
leads to expensive modifications. In the case of the Berlin airport,
said Pankin, there were about 300 ad hoc change requests by politicians
which created an explosion of costs and several delays - among them a
last-minute wish to expand the terminal to include a shopping mall.
"The
airport is a classic example of the incompetence of our politicians,"
said Sven Fandrich, a 28-year-old Berliner who works for an insurance
company. "We've seen this happen with many big infrastructure projects
in Germany. Nobody feels responsible. The politicians are more concerned
about winning the next elections than devoting their service to the
people."
Hamburg's concert hall was to have opened by 2010.
Instead it's nowhere near complete and costs have more than doubled to
575 million euros. It's now due to open in 2016.
Construction on
Cologne's North-South subway line began in 2004. After cost overruns and
a collapse that killed two people in 2009, officials say the entire
line may not be open until 2019. Costs have soared from 780 million to
1.08 billion euros.
In Leipzig, the city tunnel for commuter
trains was expected to open in 2009. Construction is still not finished,
and costs have jumped from 572 million to 960 million euros.
Of all the bungled projects, the Berlin airport is the biggest embarrassment.
The
initial plan foresaw building a stately airport that would be financed
by private investors and replace the city's two Cold War airports -
Tegel in former West Berlin and Schoenefeld in what was the communist
east.
After a series of disputes with private investors, the city,
state and federal governments eventually took over the airport project.
In 2006, costs were estimated at 2 billion euros, but after four
delays, the figure spiked to 4.4 billion euros.
Companies like Air
Berlin, Germany's second biggest carrier, have been severely affected
by the delays and are suing for lost revenues. Small businesses like
coffee shops, restaurants, retail stores or bus operators - who had
already hired staff and invested in new stores at the airport - are
facing bankruptcy.
Twitter users asked the mayor to "please open
this gate," playing off President Ronald Reagan's famous 1987 appeal to
Moscow to "tear down" the Berlin Wall.
And by the time the airport finally opens, it may face a new headache.
Some
aviation experts are warning that by its inauguration date, the airport
will already be too small to handle the rising number of passengers.
The nearly 3.9 million square foot (360,000 square meter) airport
complex was designed to handle 27 million passengers. But the existing
two city airports handled 25 million passengers last year - and the city
keeps attracting more visitors every year.
"The airport is too
expensive, too small and too much behind time," said aviation expert
Dieter Faulenbach da Costa, who recently caused a stir when he proposed
that the airport ought to be torn down.
In an effort to salvage
the mess, Hartmut Mehdorn, the hardnosed former boss of the German
railway system with a reputation for turning around failing
corporations, was named chief executive of the airport in early March.
"The whole world says: it's not possible at all," Mehdorn said when he took over. "I say: It should be possible.
"I just don't know how yet."