The flight goes to London: the first passengers check in at BER

The landing is followed by take-off: the official first plane takes off from the new BER airport today. However, regular operation does not start yet.

After the first passengers were welcomed at the new BER airport on Saturday, they will be adopted for the first time this Sunday: Shortly before sunrise at 6.45 a.m., the official first BER flight from the airport's northern runway, an Easyjet plane to London Gatwick, will take off. Further flights are scheduled for the following hours.

The northern runway has been used as the runway of the old Schönefeld Airport for many years. The BER will therefore only start operating on November 4th, when aircraft will take off from the new southern runway for the first time. As Terminal 5, the Schönefeld location is now home to the airline Ryanair.

On Saturday, airport boss Engelbert Lütke Daldrup opened the airport with guests from politics and business nine years late. "Finally we can take our airport into operation. Finally," he said on Saturday, relieved. This is not a historic day. "But it's a very important day for us, for Berlin and Brandenburg, for East Germany." Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer demanded after 14 years of construction with numerous breakdowns: "The time of jokes about BER must now be over." The CSU politician promised to do everything possible to make the airport an international hub.

Tegel remains operational

There were only a few dozen guests in the new terminal. A big party was not planned anyway after the year-long construction disaster, the corona epidemic set further limits. The motto: "We just open it." With the commissioning of BER, Tegel Airport in the north of the city will no longer be used and will be closed a week later. The closure should relieve hundreds of thousands of aircraft noise and create space for a research and commercial location. To be on the safe side, the airport in the west of the city will remain operational for another six months. But many passengers are not expected anyway due to the restrictions in the Corona crisis.

From the industry's point of view, air traffic is in the most serious crisis since the Second World War. The operators at BER expect only a fraction of the passenger numbers that would have been recorded at normal times in the coming weeks. Lütke Daldrup always emphasizes that it will be a few years before the volume normalizes again.

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