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in the description. Berlin has some truly atrocious, horrifying
things in its past—its airports. They’re just bad and ancient. Tegel airport, for example, is worse rated
on Google than the nearby prison and Schönefeld, meanwhile, is worse rated than Aleppo airport
which is in an active war-zone. But why are there two bad airports instead
of just one? Well, that’s because, decades ago, it was
rather difficult to get from this side of Berlin to this side. Basically, World War Two ended, the city was
split up into zones administered by the different allies, and the Soviets, figuring that making
their bit of the city not-suck would be harder, just built a wall to stop everyone from leaving
for West Berlin. Given that, there were the airports for West
Berlin, Tempelhof and Tegal, and there was the airport for East Berlin, Schönefeld. When the wall became not, the city therefore
had three airports, one of which closed down in 2008. This was inefficient so the city decided to
build one, big, not sucky airport. After many committees and conferences and
comments they decided on a site—they would build the new airport directly south of the
old Schönefeld airport and that way they could use one of the old runways for the new
airport. Fast forward to 2012, the era of Gangham Style,
Honey Boo Boo, and the end of the world, and the airport was nearly finished so Berlin
got ready for a massive moving operation. On the night on June 2nd, the last ever aircraft
would land and each of Berlin’s bad, old airports and then, throughout the night, all
the people and equipment from them would drive their way over to the new Brandenburg Airport. The planning for this move had been going
on for years—the city would close major highways, TV networks were arranging live
coverage, extra staff had been hired, airlines had sold tickets from the new airport for
months, Lufthansa planned a celebratory a380 flight to mark the first arrival to the new
airport, Angela Merkel was scheduled to attend an opening ceremony, it was all about to happen
until, just 26 days before move, the word came down that it would not happen—the opening
was delayed. That was 2012. Nowadays, in 2019, that new airport, Berlin
Brandenburg Airport, is still nowhere near opening. Here’s what happened with this Fyre festival
of an airport. Construction began on September 5, 2006. Bob and the other builders worked relatively
fast and by 2011, the airport was looking enough like an airport that they started tests
where more than 10,000 volunteers would check-in a bag, go through security, board a dummy
plane, and then go and collect their bags at the baggage claim. The airport looked like it was almost ready
for opening and shops were already leased out and getting ready for opening but that’s
when problems emerged. In what was thought to be the final days of
construction, a lot of what was going on was certifying that different aspects of the airport
wouldn’t kill people. That’s the job of cars—the worst method
of transportation (don’t @ me.) The German inspectors, though, were especially
concerned with making sure that the airport’s fire alarm and suppression system was up to
snuff given that only 15 years earlier the worst airport fire in the history of airport
fires had destroyed much of Dusseldorf airport, elsewhere in Germany. Therefore, they simulated a fire by releasing
smoke and my mixtape. Some alarms went off, many did not, some others
went off but in the complete wrong part of the building, and it turned out that the mess
of wiring that was causing all these alarm issues was, in and of itself, a fire hazard
and apparently the inspectors didn’t subscribe to the, “fight fire with fire,” methodology. It was also found that the vents built to
suck out smoke just simply didn’t work and would likely implode in a real fire. Long story short: the airport’s fire system
was a complete failure. The fire inspectors felt it worthwhile to
point out that the nearby Tropical Islands Resort, a waterpark, had a more complicated
fire suppression system that actually worked—the implication being that the waterpark was better
designed than the airport. The project managers desperately wanted to
open on time, though, so they proposed that, instead of having an alarm system, they would
hire 800 low-paid workers to stand around the terminal and act as, “fire spotters.” As much as I appreciate them writing my jokes
for me, the inspectors didn’t and said, “hell nein.” The next day, 26 days before opening, the
airport’s opening was delayed. Over the next few years, opening was delayed
and delayed and delayed again as they just couldn’t fix that fire system. It emerged that there were other issues as
well, though—there weren’t enough check-in desks for the expected passenger numbers,
4,000 doors were numbered incorrectly, and for a period in 2015 construction workers
weren’t even allowed in the building because they were worried the roof could collapse. Another huge issue, though, emerged in 2017. The whole idea of the airport was to act as
a large hub airport for Europe where passengers would connect from flight to flight. All the financial calculations were based
on this—for example, the revenue of shops was figuring that many passengers would be
connecting through which would have them lingering around longer. The big crucial detail, though, was that there
was only one airline with a hub in Berlin. That was Air Berlin and in late 2017, Air
Berlin became insolvent and shut down. Therefore, Berlin’s major hub airport would
have no airline hubs and with no airline hubs there would be barely any connecting passengers. The delays and their implications have become
comical at this point—in 2018, the airport had to replace 750 screens for departure boards
at a cost of more than $500,000 since they had left them on continuously for six years
and they had reached the end of their service lives. Today, in 2019, the fire suppression system
still is not working and the current official opening date of October 2020 is looking less
and less realistic. Some have even suggested that the airport
will never open and will just be torn down completely. Inside, though, the airport still sits there
looking close to brand new but yet completely non-functional—a modern, $8.5 billion airport
that has never had a single passenger. Back when Berlin was split in two, the Soviets
blocked the Western allies’ supply routes into West Berlin so there began a massive
operation to fly in every bit of supplies that West Berlin needed by plane in what came
to be known as the Berlin airlift. It was an absolutely massive and fascinating
operation and luckily, there’s a great book about it called, “the Candy Bombers.” If you’re like me, the best way to fit books
into a busy schedule is through Audible audiobooks. Audible has an enormous library of books and
audio programs that you can listen to offline, anywhere with their apps. Best of all, you can sign up for free at audible.com/hai
or text, “hai” to 500-500 and download Candy Bombers, or any other audiobook for
free in addition to two Audible originals also for free.
This is so unbelievably comical considering the whole "German Engineering" stereotype that floats around.
I have heard that German's view Berlin as a sort of "Dark Horse Shithole" compared to the rest of the country, but this is purely based off of German Redditor comments so it's not entirely reliable.
Hey I'm one of those people that bought a flight out of that Airport before it got delayed! https://imgur.com/eLzBGP8. I can't believe it's still not up.
This video barely covers why, this project is an mess a national embarrassment of one.
Building stuff is hard, delays happen but this is so unprecedented of a failure that the LAW had to be change.
Under German law as I understand it a company goes to the government "We want to build, can we build a thing there?" the government then goes "Sure, we give you 10 years" well this project is so delayed that a new law had to be made for them to finish it.
Furthermore as part of a condition to build the airport since it would disrupt the people nearby with noise and traffic the court said "The number of people in Berlin affected by the noise must go down" which as a result means 2 of Berlins airports would have to shut... fine... except that it was supposed to shut in 2012 which would have left Berlin with just 1 major airport.
It's disaster after disaster.
I think it's extra funny because Berlins Tegel Airport was built in 90 days.
The Airlift was kinda motivating it seems, and it was slightly less important to make it look pretty.
In an effort to stimulate local economy they piecemealed the hole thing and called for bids on every piece, so now you had dozens of contractors doing work independently.
Then they changed the plans during the building phase substantially. For instance adding in additional capacity for the then new Airbus A380, because a big hub had to service this air craft in their minds.
Then the almost criminal way the fire safety system was handled.
In the end you had a nice facade but there were so many mistakes made in planning, communication and execution that they are basically forced to redo the entirety of the interior again.
Sometimes it's just easier to ask a big construction company to build an airport for you...
So here I am watching that video and I'm thinking, "Well, if you have an airport that looks like a real airport but isn't actually in use as one, maybe you could mitigate at least some of the financial damage by renting it out as a movie set..." And then I realized, "WAIT A SECOND! That airport battle in Captain America: Civil War was set in Germany! Oh, that was really clever!"
Was a different airport though.
If anyone is interested in the whole story, local podcast did a great job explaining it in a four part series. It is in English.
http://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/
I flew to Schönefeld last year from the UK and honestly found it quite pleasant — the staff were great, there were decent places to wait, eat and drink (for an airport, anyway), it was reasonably clean and straightforward, and had a nice '60s jet-setter feel to the architecture. I'm not sure what that says about our own airports!
They want to claim it is "unused" when they try to sell it.