BBI – New International Airport of Berlin – as it looked in July 2010 -foto Wikipedia – author Michael F. Mehnert
The new Control tower at BBI – Berlin Brandenburg International - the new International Airport of Berlin was officially inaugurated and put into operation on the evening of 24th March. Since this time, the Schönefeld controllers have coordinated and handled air traffic on and around the airport from this newly built vantage point. When the airport opens on 3 June 2012, the Tegel tower controllers as well as the apron controllers will start working in the new tower.
At a height of 72 metres tall, the tower is the second largest control tower in Germany, and is the geographic landmark of BBI – the elliptic tower with 4 main supports offers room for 11 air-traffic control workers. The architect is Franz Ondra, a Stuttgart Architect.
The construction of a new tower between the two parallel runways was necessary for the New Berlin airport as the old tower no longer afforded a clear and unobstructed view of all operating areas.
The DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung, which controls the flights in and out of all German airports has invested almost 37 € million Euro in the tower. This investment covered not only steel and concrete but also state-of-the-art systems and technology. The air traffic controllers have been familiarising themselves with the new tower over the past few months. See – http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=5490337
Completing the control tower on time was a well-thoughtout achievement because of the challenges raised by carrying out construction during normal airport operations and during training for air-traffic controllers learning the idiosyncrasies of the new airport.
The new main terminal building will have a total floor space of 220,000 sq.m with be seven levels and 2 underground levels for railway and S-Bahn infrastructure.
BBI main terminal will have 4 check-in islands with 80 check-in terminals, along with over 200 self-service machines and the concomitant bag drop-off points. In full operation mode there will be 40 active security monitoring stations and boarding card validation areas.
For arrivals the incoming baggage claim area is housed in a hall of 20,000 sq.m and has 8 carousels.
Berlin Brandenburg International Airport, or BBI for short -and yes it will have the “BER” IATA 3-letter code – is the new international airport under construction 18 km southeast of Berlin just across from the present Berlin Schönefeld Airport .
The airport is located in-between the German federal states of Berlin and Brandenburg and will be named after the former Berlin Mayor and German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Construction cost has been estimated at 2.5 billion Euro but will most likely exceed this amount.
The good news is that it is still scheduled to open on time – Sunday 3rd June 2012.
The new airport will replace 3 airports in Berlin, one of which, Tempelhof Airport already closed in 2008.
Both Berlin’s two other present airports, Tegel and Schönefeld are expected to close at the same time in 2012, and with no new runway capacity available certain alarm bells are already ringing saying the new Terminal will be too small.
Planned to handle 25 million passengers a year, this amount is almost the present cumulative total of the two airports now – good planning that!
There has always been a perception in Berlin –rightly or wrongly – that Frankfurt and Munich have ganged-up to prevent Berlin from taking away their lucrative airline passengers, and becoming the main airport or at least 2nd main airport in Germany.
It looks like this perception will remain and even get stronger. Because of ‘noise-abatement’ regulations, flights between midnight and 5:00 a.m. will be banned, eliminating any chance of becoming a Cargo hub.The new airport is being planned as hub for the German low-cost carriers Air Berlin, Germania, Germanwings and the British EasyJet.
Interestingly it will not be a major city for Lufthansa.
There will be a major increase in capacity at the key Lufthansa hubs – in order of importance namely Frankfurt and Munich – because of the recent approval for a third runway at Munich and a fourth being added to Frankfurt already this year.
Air Berlin would like to add capacity at Frankfurt Airport where most of its international ‘OneWorld’ alliance partners use it as their European gateway. However because of Air Berlin’s present weak economic performance it cannot do this. http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/08/21/air-berlin-ceo-throws-in-the-towel-amid-growing-losses-joachim-hunold-tenders-resignation/
Instead it will concentrate on Berlin and the new BBI airport.
Many visitors to Berlin, arriving by air stay at OTA-Berlin “………..the Intelligent Apartment Alternative to Hotels in Berlin” http://www.ota-berlin.de/
See further – http://www.berlin-airport.de/EN/BER/index.html
BBI – New International Airport of Berlin Beginning of Airport operations Sunday 3rd June – New control tower of DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung inauguragted from OTA Berlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License. If you use this article or parts of it, please refer to http://www.ota-berlin.de.
Tags: a Stuttgart Architect., BBI opening 3rd June 2012, Beginning of Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Berlin Brandenburg International Airport, Franz Ondra, new Berlin Airport opens 3rtd June, new control tower of DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung inauguragted, or BBI, S-Bahn infrastructure, The DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung
Berlin Brandenburg Airport BER, not Berlin Brandenburg International BBI. Weak.