Nine years late and billions over budget, Berlin's troubled new Brandenburg Airport finally opens

2020-11-09T16:39:00-05:00

Nine years late and $4 billion over budget, the airport is already outdated. Repeated blunders dented the image of German efficiency, but the “poor but sexy” capital has long been a bit different. [...] Under construction for 14 years, the airport is nine years past its original opening date and more than $4 billion over budget. Every month, it costs several million dollars just to keep the unused airport running.

Katrin Bennhold, The New York Times’s Berlin bureau chief, takes a look back at the unbelievable saga of the long-awaited and — nine years behind schedule — now finally opened Berlin-Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport.

"The foundations of the terminal were already laid when it emerged that the star architect hired for the project, Meinhard von Gerkan, had designed the airport without a proper duty-free area — a vital source of revenue — because he had no time for the 'mall-ifiction' of airports," Bennhold writes. "Plans had to be adjusted in a panic."

Often rivaling in infamy with Germany's other troubled public vanity development, the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the new Berlin airport ultimately managed to defend the title of longest delayed, highest budget-exceeding, and most openly ridiculed project.

Berlin's $6 billion airport drama

2015-07-28T15:22:00-04:00

The architecture and engineering teams fought to keep up. As the terminal ballooned from 200,000 to 340,000 square meters (dwarfing Frankfurt’s 240,000 and just shy of Heathrow Terminal 5’s 353,000), they parceled out the work to seven contractors. That soon grew to 35, and they brought in hundreds of subcontractors, says Delius. [...] At the very moment Merkel and her allies are hectoring the Greeks about their profligacy, the airport’s cost, borne by taxpayers, has tripled to €5.4 billion.

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Nine years late and billions over budget, Berlin's troubled new Brandenburg Airport finally opens

Berlin's $6 billion airport drama