01 Three airports for a divided city

Berlin's first major airport was Tempelhof, right in the middle of the city. During the division it became a symbol: in the 1948/49 blockade the Western Allies supplied West Berlin from the air, and because Tempelhof and the British airfield at Gatow were not enough, a third airport was built in the French sector in just three months. On 5 November 1948 the first plane landed at Tegel. Tegel later became the West's main airport, cramped but famous for its short walk from taxi to gate.

In the East lay Schönefeld, from 1960 to 1990 the GDR's central and government airport and home of the state airline Interflug. The terminal building that later became part of BER as Terminal 5 opened in 1976. After reunification Berlin therefore had three airports, all too small or too close to housing, and none of them fit for a capital with growing air traffic.

02 The fight over the site

In the 1990s experts favored sites far out in Brandenburg, above all Sperenberg and Jüterbog-Ost, with plenty of space and few residents. In May 1995 Berlin's mayor Eberhard Diepgen and Brandenburg's premier Manfred Stolpe had, according to an internal memo, already agreed on Sperenberg. Then, on 5 May 1996, the planned merger of Berlin and Brandenburg failed in a referendum, and the picture changed.

A few weeks later, in May 1996, Diepgen, Stolpe and federal transport minister Matthias Wissmann agreed the so-called consensus decision: a single airport for the region, at Schönefeld, built with private investors. Tegel and Tempelhof were to close in return. It was the first case in the Federal Republic in which politicians decided against the outcome of a regional planning procedure. Today many see the choice of site as the first mistake in a long series.

03 Privatization fails, the states build it themselves

The plan to have private investors build and run the airport failed in May 2003. The shareholders, Berlin, Brandenburg and the federal government, then decided to build it themselves. Planning approval came on 13 August 2004, in April 2005 the Federal Administrative Court imposed a temporary halt after residents sued, and in 2006 the project got the green light. The first spade went into the ground on 5 September 2006, and the airport was due to open on 30 October 2011.

04 Four weeks before opening: cancelled

In June 2010 the opening was postponed for the first time, to 3 June 2012, partly because of stricter EU security rules. The invitations had gone out and the plans for moving from Tegel were ready when the airport company called everything off on 8 May 2012: the fire protection technology did not work. In particular, the system meant to extract smoke from the terminal in a fire failed hot-smoke tests at the end of 2012. On 23 May 2012 the planning firm was dismissed without notice.

What followed is a chronicle of missed dates. 17 March 2013 did not hold, nor did 27 October 2013, and in January 2013 the opening was postponed indefinitely. Airport chief Rainer Schwarz had to go, followed by Hartmut Mehdorn, later Karsten Mühlenfeld and in 2017 Engelbert Lütke Daldrup. In 2014 a technical director was dismissed after only about two months in office over corruption allegations, and in 2015 Imtech Deutschland, involved in the building services, filed for insolvency. In 2017 automatic doors and the sprinkler system caused problems. In the end it came down to cables, wall plugs and test certificates: the TÜV only approved the smoke extraction system in April 2019, and the building authority released the terminal in April 2020.

Berlin's state parliament set up a committee of inquiry, which presented its final report in 2016. The airport became the country's running joke. One detail that is really true: for years, empty S-Bahn and regional trains ran through the finished but closed airport station every day to keep the tunnels ventilated and free of mold.

05 Opening in the Covid autumn

On 31 October 2020 the time had come, in the middle of the pandemic. An easyJet and a Lufthansa plane were supposed to land side by side on the two runways for the opening; it did not happen, and easyJet arrived first. The airport bears the name of Willy Brandt. A week later, on 8 November 2020, the last scheduled flight took off from Tegel, an Air France plane to Paris. Tempelhof had already closed on 30 October 2008, after a referendum to keep it open failed in April 2008. Today its airfield is a park.

The old GDR terminal at Schönefeld briefly carried on as Terminal 5, closed temporarily in February 2021 and permanently in November 2022. Since December 2023 the station there is simply called "Schönefeld"; do not confuse it with the airport station beneath Terminals 1 and 2.

06 BER today

The airport is owned 37 percent each by Berlin and Brandenburg and 26 percent by the federal government. It covers 1,470 hectares and has two runways, 3,600 and 4,000 meters long. Terminals 1 and 2 together are designed for 36 million passengers a year. A night flight ban applies between midnight and 5 am. Since December 2025 the newly built Dresden railway line has connected the airport much faster to the center, and the airport express now takes 23 instead of 39 minutes to the main station.

07 And the future?

The near future looks bumpy. Ryanair is closing its BER base on 24 October 2026, withdrawing the seven aircraft stationed there and roughly halving its Berlin schedule. The airline cites fees and taxes that have risen sharply since 2019. The airport therefore expects a drop to 25 to 25.2 million passengers in 2027. Before the pandemic, Tegel and Schönefeld together still counted around 36 million.

In the long run there is room for more: the two runways could handle up to 45 million passengers a year, the plans include a Terminal 3 and a Terminal 4, and to the south there would be space for a third runway. The Bundeswehr's VIP flight service is to move entirely from Cologne/Bonn to BER by 2032, and a government terminal is planned for 2035. There is also talk of extending the U7 from Rudow to the airport; a state feasibility study expects 35,000 passengers a day. Little of this is decided and funded yet, and given the history, caution about dates is advisable.

And the old airports? Tempelhof is one of the city's largest open spaces, and on the Tegel site a technology park and a new residential quarter are being built. How to get from BER into the city fastest today is in From BER into the city, with a table for every major destination.