Berlin Brandenburg Airport (IATA: BER, ICAO: EDDB) (German: Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt) is an international airport under construction 18 km (11 mi) south of central Berlin, the capital city of Germany. After several delays, it is scheduled to open on 27 October 2013. The airport is located in Schönefeld on the border between the states of Berlin and Brandenburg and will be named after the former Berlin Mayor, German Chancellor and Nobel Peace Laureate Willy Brandt. It was designed by architects Gerkan, Marg und Partner. Construction costs are estimated at 4.2 billion euros.
The new airport will replace three airports in Berlin. Tempelhof Airport closed in 2008, and Tegel Airport is scheduled to close in 2013. The terminal infrastructure of the existing Berlin Schönefeld Airport will be closed in 2013 while some of the airport's infrastructure will be incorporated into the greatly expanded airport area to the south. The airport will inherit Schönefeld's existing southern runway, which will become the new airport's northern runway. Due to noise-abatement regulations, flights between midnight and 5:00 a.m. will not be permitted.
The Berlin Brandenburg Airport will be a hub for Air Berlin, Germania, Germanwings, and a focus city for Lufthansa. The initial capacity of the airport is designed to serve 30–50 million passengers. The two main operators, Air Berlin and Lufthansa, each will handle around 30% of the scheduled commercial flights. Projections indicate the new airport will be the third busiest airport in Germany and thirteenth busiest in Europe in 2013. A major railway station built under the airport's check-in terminal will provide several connections with the wider region and establish a direct link to Berlin Hauptbahnhof.
Read more about Berlin Brandenburg Airport: Infrastructure, Airlines and Destinations, Accidents and Incidents
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“Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.”
—Irving Berlin (1888–1989)
“Airplanes are invariably scheduled to depart at such times as 7:54, 9:21 or 11:37. This extreme specificity has the effect on the novice of instilling in him the twin beliefs that he will be arriving at 10:08, 1:43 or 4:22, and that he should get to the airport on time. These beliefs are not only erroneous but actually unhealthy.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)