Berlin's new major airport is scheduled to open on October 31 next year. If that happens, it will be nine years later and several billion kronor more expensive than expected.
”"The date is set," said Engelbert Lütke-Daldrup, CEO of Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg (FBB), the company that will operate the airport, at a press conference on Friday.
He admitted that there are still eleven months of hard work left.
The head of government of the federal state of Brandenburg, the Social Democrat Dietmar Woidke, is optimistic.
”This time it will work out,” he says.
The Green Party leader in Brandenburg, Anton Hofreiter, is more cautious, calling the plan "very ambitious given the problems that remain to be solved.".
Construction of the airport began in 2006 and was scheduled to open in 2011. However, construction delays have delayed the opening. In addition, a former manager was convicted of bribery in 2016.
Meanwhile, the price tag has risen, from the original 1.7 to around 6.5 billion euros.
The idea is that Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, with the additional name Willy Brandt, will replace the two existing airports, Tegel and Schönefeld. However, in a referendum in 2017, Berliners voted to keep Tegel after concerns that the new airport would be too small when it opened. However, the government insists that the new major airport should be the only one in the capital.
Source: TT
