Why Berlin has not been able to open a new airport for many years. Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport Berlin Airport BER is a problematic long-term construction
For 12 years, the main German construction project has been dragging on - the new airport in Berlin. It is not being opened not because the airport has not been completed - it was almost completed six years ago. Berlin-Brandenburg Airport cannot be put into operation due to a non-functioning fire-fighting system.
Meanwhile, the object itself is rapidly becoming obsolete and is already becoming too small for the new capital of Europe. And the voices of those who propose to demolish the bulky and senseless building are getting louder.
This week, the authorities called foreign journalists to the airport, including the head of the European edition of RTVI, Konstantin Goldenzweig, and announced a new (next) opening date: October 2020.
This air harbor became international even before the opening: amazed journalists from all over the world were on the bus. Outside the window, in an open field, a whole metropolis suddenly grows - autobahns, interchanges, hotels, an underground station and around all this - an airport. But at the entrance, except for those accompanying, not a soul. Although outwardly, from the air bridges to the chandeliers in the waiting rooms - everything is ready.
“We will certainly launch - in October 2020. That is, we need another two and a half years. We ask everyone to be a little patient. We have deliberately chosen this date. She is achievable"
The predecessors of Engelbert Lütke Daldrup, the head of the airport, announced its opening in 2017, and in 2015, and in 2013, in 2012 as “achievable”. And a month before the scheduled commissioning, "everyone was already asked to be patient a little more."
ex-head of the Berlin airport under construction
“We will hand over this object now very soon. After the summer break
Six years have passed.
Chairman of the Board of Berlin Airports
“In the next two years, each month of this construction will cost 9-10 million euros. Including the cost of maintaining an empty building: after all, it needs to be heated, illuminated, protected ... "
Coming to the object, it feels like you are in a ghost town. The length of one wing of the terminal is 400 meters, the length of the neighboring one is another 400 meters. There are ready-made escalators, signboards, furniture for the airport and even advertising here: however, it is not clear to anyone. Every day of downtime costs the Germans tens of thousands of euros - it is not surprising that as a result, the total budget of the air harbor from the original billion euros has grown to almost seven billion.
The main source of problems is the most complex fire extinguishing system. If a
a giant building breaks out, then, for each of the 360 pre-calculated fire scenarios, sensors, a voice alert should work, water will pour from the ceiling, the hood will begin to pump out smoke, and the doors will automatically open. For five years now, they have been testing here, in order to tie it together, all the fire-fighting automation installed by five different companies. The services of the general contractor at the construction site were refused.
Berlin airport spokesman
“Do you see a tiny device that looks like a flower under the ceiling? There are more than 70 thousand such irrigation sprinklers in case of fire in this building. During the construction phase of the terminal, they were installed with errors. And now we had to replace all of them or debug them. It became a huge problem.”
What a shock to a German is a familiar picture to a Russian: a kilometer-long exhaust system going against the laws of physics into the basement was designed not by an engineer, but by a draftsman who pretended to be him. The creativity of his colleagues is disentangled here: shift 90 kilometers of cables, change 600 fire walls. When in 2015 they finally undertook to debug the hood itself, it turned out that the fans on the roof of the terminal were too heavy, and it could collapse. The building is up again.
architect, airport designer
“The contractors then replied: “Okay, we will rebuild everything. But we do not give any guarantees, and payment, please, hourly - for the fact of our presence. This is exactly how they have been paid since 2013: hundreds of millions not for the result, but for sitting at the construction site.
They are sitting. In this curtain of smoke, the German technical genius may have burned out, but not the German principles. In a tiny office in the district center of Königs-Wusterhausen, she is personified by Chris Halecke. The coordination of the fire extinguishing system depends on the head of the supervisory agency. Khaleke's subordinates and independent expertise are not satisfied with her.
“Everyone wants me to take the risk and accept this airport as it is. But I won't do it. Firstly, my good name, well-being and professional future depend on it. And secondly, because I have a responsibility to the people who live here. I live off their taxes, and they have, damn it, every right to demand honest work from me. ”
The assurances of the capital's mayor, ministers, even the German government are not a decree. He followed the news in Siberian Kemerovo and, in general, lived in Russia. To the question "why not put an ill-fated signature?" a retired GDR officer answers more accessible than ever.
Vice President of the District of Dahme-Spreewald
“The prosecutor's office would investigate the case. And the prosecutor's office in our country is independent, you understand? So in the end, colleagues who issued such permits would be held criminally liable. And now, perhaps, we would all be in prison.”
United Berlin - a single airport: the construction of the century on the outskirts of the new German capital was approved back in 1991. Over the years, the local carrier Air Berlin, on the basis of which this hub was built, went bankrupt without waiting for it. There is no place to accept new flights - the hotels of the city, which seems to be experiencing a tourist boom, have not counted millions of euros. And the supercomplex, which was created as the most modern airport in the capital of the world's main engineering power, became, in fact, its biggest anecdote. Berliners, however, even like it.
Burkhard Kicker: “I don't think that Berlin has the image of such a German capital. We do not get up at six in the morning, we are not in a hurry to manufacture cars. A Berliner first needs to drink a cappuccino and open a laptop to come up with some other cool idea. Berlin is not Germany, so this flaw behind my back fits perfectly into the image of the city.”
The first thing a tourist sees when they get to the capital of the main EU country is the operating Berlin Tegel Airport, where Mimino was also filmed. There are no subways or trains. You need to get on a crowded bus. After that, along the wooden flooring, similar to scaffolding, we go to the neighboring terminal. This transition is built as temporary, but it seems that there is nothing more permanent. Then we go down the wooden stairs, and we find ourselves in front of another temporary hut. Flights fly from this iron shed, including to Russia and Ukraine. In a word, it is not surprising that, according to the results of a fresh survey, both Berlin Tegel and the second Berlin air harbor Schönefeld entered the top five worst airports in the world. But the chances of opening a new one are so small that Berliners voted in a referendum last year to preserve this heritage - at least it works.
ex-head of Berlin airports
“No, the airport will not open in 2020. But in 2021... Although there are those who say in 2023. But, in general, if we in Germany repeat all the time how advanced we are in technology, and cannot cope with doors and fans, then what are we worth?
Tomorrow, hundreds of citizens are waiting at this take-off, who, according to a good tradition, will come running not to a rally, but to the Berlin half marathon. Sports competitions are a way to somehow use the gigantic territory. It would be sad if it weren't so funny - in Berlin, where there have been no major fires for many years, they console themselves: it's better that way than vice versa.
Konstantin Goldenzweig, Ilya Levintov, Yana Karpova, RTVI from Germany
Last Friday in Berlin there was a meeting of the Supervisory Board of Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH (FBB), which is the construction operator in the suburbs of the German capital - Schönefeld, Dahme-Spreewald - a huge international airport named after Willy Brandt (BER). According to Chairman of the Board Rainer Bretschneider (Rainer Bretschneider) and FBB Director Engelbert Lütke Daldrup (Engelbert Lütke Daldrup), it is not yet possible to name the timing of the commissioning of the airport. Probably, as the two transparent managers emphasized, this will be done only on December 15, 2017 at the next meeting of the Supervisory Board. But before this date, it is still necessary to negotiate with construction companies in order to settle everything:
— Die Absprachen mit den Baufirmen seien so weit gediehen, dass er dann in einer Sondersitzung des Aufsichtsrats ausführlich zum Terminrahmen vortragen könne, Mr. Daldrup explained.
Recall that the construction of the mega-airport named after Willy Brandt was started on the outskirts of Berlin in September 2006, and the first term of its opening was scheduled for the end of 2011. The initial construction cost was about 1.7 billion euros. It was also assumed that the new airport would replace two outdated Berlin air harbors - Tegel and Schönefeld airports (Tegel and Schönefeld), which were already choking with passenger traffic. In 2016, for example, they received almost 33 million passengers, which exceeds their capacity. Whereas the new airport was supposed to pass 27 million passengers annually through itself with the prospect of increasing this flow to 34 million by 2016 and 47 million by 2024. That is, the Germans cannot be reproached for a poor calculation of the growth in passenger flow - if the airport had been built on time, then there would have been no problems.
However, the first nail in the building of the German long-term construction was hammered by politicians: the operating company FBB was turned by them into a subsistence collective farm. The municipality of Berlin and the authorities of the federal state of Brandenburg each received 37% of its shares, and the remaining 26% went to the federal government of Germany. As a result, it turned out that neither Brandenburg, nor Berlin, nor the "feds" can really agree on any decisions, the company's board is helpless, and the German parliament cannot conduct an independent audit of the construction. The second nail turned out to be the builders themselves, contractors and FBB technical staff. While the company's management assigned themselves generous salaries and bonuses, they also did not sit idly by and worked hard ... to increase the cost of the project. Between 2010 and 2015, airport construction costs tripled to more than 4.5 billion euros, and by early 2016, 5.4 billion euros.
In addition, it turned out that during the construction, the punctual Germans committed the most unimaginable violations - for example, the fire ventilation system was designed exactly backwards, and the total number of "bugs" went off scale either for eight, or for sixteen thousand. Here even the trained German media could not stand it, through which a wave of mild discontent swept ( can!) - in FBB in April 2014, a bribe was (imagine) found!
Jochen Großmann, CTO of Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH (FBB), forcedly agreed to be the lizard's tail. He was charged with extortion of 350 thousand (according to other sources - 500 thousand) euros from the Dutch company Arcadis. The non-transparent scoundrel was removed from office, and in the fall of 2014 he was sentenced to a year of suspended prison and a fine of 200,000 euros. His old friend Jörg Marks, top manager of Siemens, was appointed in his place. Since then, corruption in the FBB has been finally defeated.
FBB head Engelbert Lütke Daldrup.
However, this did not affect the degree of readiness of the airport in any way. Over the past three years, three directors have changed at the head of the FBB: Hartmut Mehdorn, who was elderly and lethargic as a turtle, was replaced in March 2015 by the energetic machine builder Karsten Mühlenfeld, who was replaced by an architect and urban development specialist in the spring of 2017 Engelbert Lutke Daldrup. The total construction estimate, meanwhile, has grown to a “pleasant” 6.6 billion euros, but this is subject to the condition of opening the airport no later than autumn 2018, and it is obvious to everyone that it will continue to grow. German politicians were "not able" to curb the construction mafia: Karsten Mühlefeld, in his post, "fought" for two years with technical director Jörg Marx, who was suspected of an obvious collusion with contractors. After joining FBB, Engelbert Daldrup, Marx was finally given a kick in the ass, but it suddenly became clear that now no one wants to go to work at Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH as a technical director and be responsible for the pace of construction!
An attempt to drag Carsten Wilmsen, director of construction and development of the Munich Airport, to this position, who achieved good results in his post, ended in failure. Mr. Wilmsen, don't be a fool, asked for a salary of 400,000 euros a year (not counting bonuses and other nice bonuses), as well as a seat on the FBB board. In the end, if you are a switchman, then at least with the right to vote and a solid monetary reward!
This came up against the rejection of the company's shareholders - the representatives of Brandenburg allegedly vetoed such conditions during the voting, while Berlin and the "feds" did not argue with this (all decisions in the operating company are taken only unanimously). In their opinion, it is enough that the FBB already has a board of three top managers with similar salaries - Daldrup himself, chief financial officer Heike Fölster and director of personnel Manfred Bobke (Manfred Bobke von Carmen). As a result, without waiting for a public decision on his candidacy, Mr. Wilmsen buried the brilliant plan of Daldrup and Bretschneider to recruit a well-known specialist in the construction of airports to their team. Wilsman himself, as the German media emphasized, decided not to balk if " company shareholders against me":
Flughafenchef Engelbert Lütke Daldrup und der Aufsichtsratsvorsitzende Reiner Bretschneider sind mit ihrem Plan gescheitert, einen eigenen neuen Bau-Geschäftsführer für die Flughafengesellschaft Berlin-Brandenburg einzusetzen. Am Tag vor der Aufsichtsratssitzung am Freitag sickerte durch, dass der ausgewählte Bau-Experte Carsten Wilmsen den Job abgesagt hat. Der bisherige Chef der Bauabteilung des Münchener Flughafens warf das Handtuch, weil es in Kreisen der Gesellschafter Berlin, Brandenburg und Bund Bedenken gegen die Stellenbesetzung gibt.
Finding a decent technical director after such a demarche in FBB is very unlikely. No one wants to be an errand boy at the board of a company where billions of euros are being sawn and shareholders are a bunch of incompetent politicians.
As for the deadline of December 15 named by Daldrup and Bretschneider, observers are not very deceived - everyone has already lost count, how many times this or that date of the official launch of Willy Brandt Airport into operation was called and canceled. The European Investment Bank, which is raising a syndicated loan of up to 2 billion euros to complete the airport, would like to hear a date no later than September 2019, but no one would be surprised if he leaves somewhere in 2020, for example. And in general, the company does not even have a real financial plan yet - the previous one was designed to open the airport no later than the fall of 2018. This means that the construction site will need more money, and the financial hole in the current balance is already 500 million euros, according to Tagesspiegel and Focus:
"Das würde bedeuten: Der BER braucht noch mehr Geld. "Aktuell fehlen daher in den FBB-Kalkulationen rund 500 Millionen Euro".
Publications on the construction of the Willy Brandt Airport in Germany can be viewed.
- "about travel, life in Berlin and bike rides." We are publishing its text about what is happening today with the unfinished Berlin-Brandenburg Airport. Anastasia went on a tour at the airport and tells how the empty building looks from the inside, how much money is spent on its maintenance, and why the issue of opening the airport today is not only technical, but also political.
The construction of a new trendy and modern airport began in 2006. Berlin-Brandenburg Airport was to become the most modern airport in Europe and replace the outdated Tegel and Schönefeld airports that did not meet the new requirements. It took five years to finish Berlin-Brandenburg and transfer all flights there. The grand opening was scheduled for October 2011. A few months earlier, all tickets purchased with arrivals and transfers in Berlin were indicated with a new airport. But then something went wrong.
It turned out that the airport did not meet safety requirements, and the opening was postponed to June 3, 2012. In May 2012, everything was ready: life was in full swing in the building of the new airport, all restaurants and shops were ready to open exactly on June 3rd. On the night of June 2-3, a large logistics operation was planned to deliver vehicles and equipment from Tegel and Schönefeld to Brandenburg. It was impossible to transport all these cars in advance, since they were required at the old airports to service the last flights scheduled for June 2. This transportation was even supposed to be covered live on television, but in May there were malfunctions in the fire safety system, and the opening was again postponed. It is difficult to realize the scale of this puncture, because both Tegel and Schönefeld were already supposed to be closed on June 3, when suddenly 4 weeks before that everything is canceled. Ignore, waltz.
The new date was March 2013. The management kicked their heel in the chest and said that now nothing would stop them from opening the airport. Time passed, one scandal followed another, someone was fired, someone was accused, someone extorted bribes, someone gave them. March 2013 turned into September, then into the end of 2015, and then into 2016. 2016 became the middle of 2017. When I wrote the prehistory of Berlin-Brandenburg for the first time, the new date was 2018 or 2019. Now all dates have shifted to at least 2020, or even 2021. Now we are already talking about some kind of “soft launch” to open the airport, at least without the main terminal. The website of the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper conducted a survey in which 75,000 people took part. According to the survey results, 70% believe that the airport will never open. € 6.5 billion has already been spent on the project, and this amount is growing every day. According to Deutsche Welle, each day costs taxpayers €1 million. A lot of effort and money is spent to ensure that what has already been built does not collapse. For example, on weekdays at 10:26 am, Deutsche Bahn sends an empty train to the metro station located at the airport. This solitary journey promotes air circulation and prevents railroad tracks from rusting.
“Each day of downtime costs taxpayers €1 million”
The problem is also that the capacity of Brandenburg (from 27 to 45 million passengers per year), even if it opens in 2020, will no longer be sufficient to close both Tegel and Schönefeld, as was originally intended. Expanding the airport's capacity to 55 million passengers a year requires another €2.3 billion!
In May 2016, some kind of detective story began. Then there was information that the informant who told about corruption on the project was poisoned: the poison was mixed into his coffee. The poisoning was not fatal, the suspects were not named, but in any case, this is another muddy story in the piggy bank of Brandenburg horror stories.
Berlin-Brandenburg became an occasion for jokes about Berliners. For example, when the Darmstadt football club lost to Hertha Berlin and were relegated from the first Bundesliga, the team tweeted: "We landed in the second league, but you still land in Tegel."
“It is strange that many monitors in the terminal are turned on and working - and this is with the cost of electricity in Germany, German savings and concern for the environment”
While the airport is closed, it was decided to put a good face on a bad game and start conducting tours there on foot or by bike. Previously, tours were held four times a week, now they have left only once, so it is advisable to sign up in advance. The tour starts in a building near Schönefeld Airport, where the guide tells a little story about Berlin-Brandenburg and shows how many buildings have already been completed (many, but what's the point?). After that, everyone gets on the bus and finally goes to see the most infamous airport in Germany.
A few years ago, on tours, you could get into the observation tower, go up to the site and look from above at the terminal, an unused runway, empty parking lots and technical buildings. But our group of 38 people was immediately brought to the main terminal. It was built according to the One-roof-concept principle - everything had to be under one roof: domestic, European and intercontinental flights, restaurants, shops and a metro station. By the way, this same roof was also the cause of several delays in the opening, since its weight (comparable to the weight of the Eiffel Tower) exceeded the allowable twice! So I looked at her with apprehension.
Walking around the empty terminal is very cool. It's nice and spacious, the check-in and luggage drop-off desks are made of wood and look decent. Everything is very light, weightless and makes a great impression, if you forget for a second that this is just an empty building, on the maintenance of which huge amounts of money are spent every day. For example, it was a little strange to see that many monitors in the terminal were turned on and working - and this at the cost of electricity in Germany, German savings and care for the environment.
The 1,000-square-meter Magic Carpet sculpture by American artist Pai White, consisting of metallic red ribbons, was supposed to symbolize the ease of flying and the international status of the airport. As the guide said, now this sculpture is a symbol of how creativity (that is, the airport) has not yet been able to defeat bureaucratic problems. In general, he talked a lot about the fact that the issue of opening the airport at the moment is not so much technical as political, and that even if it seems that 99% is ready for opening, then 1% is not so easy to finish.
After the main terminal we were taken to the south. There is also the only gate for the A380 aircraft at the airport. The teleport of the gate is decorated with the installation of the artist Olaf Nikolay "Gadget". These "pearls" glow. Their color depends on the color of the aircraft, and the intensity of the light depends on the number of passengers in the air bridge. Near the building of the southern terminal, you can look at the runway and even see the inscription Berlin Brandenburg Airport, which, except for this tour, is unlikely to be seen in the coming years.
In general, I liked the tour, because when else will it be possible to visit such an unusual place inside? But the feelings are mixed: it's a shame that so much time, so much money, so much space and labor is wasted. It seems to me that it is time for the airport management to take the liberty and start renting at least the building of the main terminal for filming-weddings-corporate parties and techno parties. I would definitely go for one.
Walking tours of Berlin-Brandenburg Airport take place every Thursday at 2 pm. The price of the excursion is € 5 for participants under 14 years old, € 10 for everyone else. It lasts 2 hours. The duration of the bike tour is also 2 hours, it takes place on Sundays at 2 pm, the cost is € 15 (a small lunch is included in this price). Please note that participants under the age of fourteen are not allowed on the bike tour. You can sign up for a tour by calling +4930609177770 or by letter to [email protected] .
Photo - Travelclever, seele.com
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