Many years behind schedule, Berlin’s new airport (BER) is finally set to open on October 31 next year, reports Germany’s dw.com.
The airport’s CEO Engelbert Lutke Daldrup confirmed the news on Friday.
As Business Traveller has reported several times over the past eight years since the airport was originally scheduled to open, Berlin Brandenburg has been beset by many issues.
But matters now appear to be more definite – earlier this year the airport began to allocate terminal space to carriers including Easyjet, Lufthansa, Eurowings and Ryanair.
The next question is for how long Tegel (currently Berlin’s main airport) will remain open.
The original plan was for Tegel to close at the same time BER was to open. But current thinking is that Tegel will now remain open for a little longer.
This would be a wise decision because if there were issues when BER opens, flights would still be able to use Tegel.
Schonefeld (the capital city’s other airport) will remain in business. In fact Schonefeld occupies the same airfield as BER.
IRJ reports that rail operator DB has been running ‘ghost’ trains for many years so as to keep the airport station, trains and signalling equipment in good working order.
Rail journey times from BER to the city will be 35 minutes by express train and 51 minutess by S-Bahn.
News is awaited of the large four-star airport hotel which has been mothballed for many years. The original operator was to have been Germany’s Steigenberger.
