Tag Archives for berlin brandenburg airport.
The Berlin airport still has huge problems. First of all the airport is on the brink of bankruptcy and expects to run out of money at the start of next year.
Wherever the money has gone, it clearly hasn’t been invested in clean water, which brings us to the second recent problem: the water isn’t safe to drink in terminal 1 which is host to Lufthansa Group carriers, Air France, British Airways, easyJet, United and others.
After contracting disputes, the government walked away from private contracts to build the airport in 2003, and instead handed out 30-40 contracts to smaller companies and decided to oversee the project itself – which they lacked the expertise to do – instead of hiring an experienced design-build firm responsible for delivering on a budget. The airport didn’t just take 23 years, it came in at triple the cost too.
In 1989 David Hasselhof stood atop the Berlin Wall belting out “Looking for Freedom.” Less than a year later East Germans were finally free.
Thirty one years after David Hasselhof stood between East and West Berlin the East’s old airport may finally be freed as the new Berlin Brandenburg airport, replacing Berlin Tegel. It’s a costly reminder of East German-style planning.
The punch list for the airport ballooned to 550,000 items. The original $2.6 billion project is now projected to cost $8.25 billion.
In the meantime the train station runs one ghost train a day “to keep the air moving.” The airport hotel has had staff for years “forlornly dusting rooms and turning on taps to keep the water supply moving.”
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
