Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BBI)

German city of Berlin Brandenburg Airport

• Berlin Brandenburg International (BBI) - under construction
• The code for the city of Berlin is BER

The expansion of Schönefeld Airport to Berlin Brandenburg International BBI

The mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, the state premier of the state of Brandenburg, Matthias Platzeck, German federal transport minister, Wolfgang Tiefensee, and the managers of Berlin Airports presented the latest plans for the capital’s new BBI Airport at a joint press conference in May 2006.

As a result of the extension work, Schönefeld Airport will be expanded by an area measuring 970 hectares. In total the new airport will cover 1470 hectares or 2,000 football pitches.
The midfield terminal will have six floors and the initial version will have enough space to handle 22 – 25 million passengers a year.

According to current plans, the initial version of the terminal will have 16 jetways. Plans have also been drawn up to provide about ten walk boarding positions.

BBI will have more than 65 aircraft parking stands.

Passengers at BBI will find everything ranging from domestic to European and even intercontinental flights under one roof in the central terminal (“one roof concept”).

As many as 6,500 passengers will take off or land during a typical peak business hour at BBI.
The building costs for the airport amount to two billion euros. The costs for road and rail connections and outside investments (e.g. car parks, hotels and conference centres) are not included in this figure.

Berlin’s mayor, Klaus Wowereit, had this to say about the BBI plans: “Berlin will take a huge step forwards with BBI. We are expecting new intercontinental flights to come here and we believe that passenger numbers will continue to rise over the next few years. BBI is firmly anchored in the region with its distinctive architecture. I am certain that the new airport will be a fitting business card for the German capital.”

Matthias Platzeck, the state premier of Brandenburg, said he believed that BBI was the key project for the Berlin/Brandenburg region. “BBI is extremely important for the domestic economy. I am sticking to my guns: it will enable us to take off into the future. Everybody can now get an idea of what the new airport will look like by looking at the terminal architecture. This image will become reality over the next few years. It will also play its part in giving our region a new face.”

German federal transport minister Wolfgang Tiefensee stressed the importance of the airport for Germany as a whole: “In BBI, the German capital is obtaining an airport that can hold its own in the face of international services and competition. This will also set a clear signal for the regeneration of eastern Germany. BBI will not only stimulate the employment market in the region around the capital, but it will also further reinforce the economic power of eastern Germany. We will also tackle the steps needed to provide excellent transport connections quickly, so that BBI can enter service as planned in 2011.”

BBI will provide the urgently needed airport for the region around the German capital to cover the volume of air traffic in the next few decades. Once the airport opens at the start of the 2011/2012 winter timetable with a capacity to handle 22 – 25 million passengers per annum, it will be possible to expand BBI in modules to handle as many as 40 million passengers, depending on the way that the market develops.

“Berlin Airports are already growing faster than the market at the moment. We will continue this success story with BBI. We are placing BBI on the market as an airport at the heart of Europe with a strong focus on European and intercontinental point-to-point traffic,” the CEO of Berlin Airports, Dieter Johannsen-Roth, said in summarising the marketing strategy.

“BBI will be one of a new generation of airports: functional, with clear lines, flooded with light and cosmopolitan. We will realise architecture to match this at low cost prices,” said BBI managing director Thomas Weyer. “After a start has been made on the building work in 2006, the major work needed for the new runway and the railway station will begin in 2007. Work on the terminal will start in 2008. Then the airport will start to take shape”.

Here is a summary of the airport of the future:

The architecture: With its echoes of regional architecture, BBI will clearly find its place in the region near the German capital. The terminal with its divided facades and clear geometric forms continues architectural elements ranging from the Prussian designer Karl Friedrich Schinkel to the Bauhaus style. The central access road, which will be an avenue lined with trees, picks up characteristic features from the townscapes and countryside of the Berlin/Brandenburg region.

Check-in: The days of paper tickets are numbered. E-tickets will dominate the airport world of tomorrow. As a result, there will not only be 80 check-in desks, but also about 200 airline check-in machines at BBI. Passengers will then be able to use them to print out boarding cards themselves, e.g. for flights booked on the Internet.

Retail/Non-aviation: Modern journeys start at the airport of tomorrow after the security check. Shops and restaurants, cafés and bars will be just as important at BBI as runways and check-in desks. There will also be top-class catering and retail facilities outside the security zone for visitors to BBI and hotels and conference centres in the AirportCity area.

Security: Airports of tomorrow will have even more stringent security areas than today. The EU Commission beefed up the security rules for airports at the beginning of 2006 once again. For example, these make personal checks on staff working at airports obligatory. As many as seven different flows of passengers (incoming, outgoing, transfer, EU, non-EU, Schengen, non-Schengen) will have to be strictly separated in future. The BBI planners have already taken these complex requirements into account in their work even before the ground-breaking ceremony takes place. This also enables them to minimise any loss of time possibly caused by tougher security rules. Modern identification processes will play an important role at BBI. Berlin Airports are already successfully testing biometric identity processes at Schönefeld and Tegel Airports.

Ideal traffic connections: BBI will also have the best possible connections on the ground. It will be easy for passengers to reach the airport by car using the A 113 (new) motorway or the B 96a main road via a central terminal access road. Rail travellers will get off trains at the underground terminal station after the 20 minute trip from the main/Lehrter station and will be able to reach the terminal in a matter of minutes using the escalators and lifts.

Environmental compatibility: Environmental compatibility plays a major role in the plans for BBI. Noise levels caused by aircraft on the ground are largely absorbed by the airport site because of the midfield concept. Reasonably priced operating and maintenance costs are an important part of the plans for BBI. The planners have attached particular importance to ideal energy consumption in the individual buildings. The plans not only include the use of highly innovative heat recovery systems, but renewable energy systems have also been integrated – e.g. geothermal energy or cooling systems using rainwater. An ecological building supervision process will minimise environmental pollution during building work (e.g. transferring protected species of animals, using lownoise building vehicles and low-noise asphalt for building roads). Comprehensive balancing and substitution measures (e.g. the renaturation of an area measuring 2,000 hectares south of Berlin) will accompany the expansion of the airport.