Indy wrote:

What exactly is the problem with the airport? From the outside it looks complete, so it would see all of the work is inside. Couldn't they have gutted and completely rebuilt the inside in less than half the time this whole fiasco has taken place? How do the responsible parties keep dropping the ball? And I assume the person largely responsible for this mess walked away with lined pockets.

It isn't just a single problem.
The whole thing came to public attention when it was discovered that the structure cannot comply with fire safety regulations. While normal design criteria build in smoke extraction upwards using natural convection, the architect didn't like the aesthetics that produced, and produced a design that used fans to suck the smoke downwards, under part of the building and then up again to one side. But of course in a fire scenario one of the first things to do is turn the power off...
Then there's the way that data and power cables have been crammed indiscriminately together in ducts, without proper plans, increasing the risk that there will actually be a fire, and making maintenance very difficult; the famous escalator that is too short for the height it is meant to carry people, resulting in one fixed step at the top, and the list just goes on. It isn't just a case of gutting the building, it virtually needs dismantling and starting again. But the political implications of doing that mean that the entire generation of local politicians who were responsible will have to have left office before it happens.

the political implications of doing that mean that the entire generation of local politicians who were responsible will have to have left office before it happens.

I fully agree, and that (the retirement of the responsible generation of politicians) is the factor which will drive the inauguration of BER, not the construction timelines. Doing what is necessary at BER (and TXL by the way) implies admitting a major political defeat, and these politicians will never do that.

Don't forget that now there are many people that earn money (as in billions) through the endless construction phase. The longer it takes the better for them. This might very well have morphed into some possible serious corruption and fraud case. But as two federal states plus the federal government including all the big parties are envolved nobody has the balls to start investigating. There are two local parliaments honestly investigating but the scale of the case visibly goes beyound their business. It needs to be done by the Bundestag or even better the EU anti-fraud guys.

Noshow wrote:

Don't forget that now there are many people that earn money (as in billions) through the endless construction phase. The longer it takes the better for them. This might very well have morphed into some possible serious corruption and fraud case. But as two federal states plus the federal government including all the big parties are envolved nobody has the balls to start investigating. There are two local parliaments honestly investigating but the scale of the case visibly goes beyound their business. It needs to be done by the Bundestag or even better the EU anti-fraud guys.

It's not that state authorities and the federal government don't have the balls to investigate this, they simply choose not to. And it seems the BER case isn't really a priority in the state parliaments of Berlin and Brandenburg, as well as the Bundestag. If they were to investigate, they'd also have to investigate several other infrastructure projects of at least the last 15 years, which would also include the Stuttgart 21 fiasco, for which construction costs are on the rise (guess who's picking up the tab?), the inauguration of the new train station appears to be delayed and where people have been injured while protesting against it. One of those, Mr Dietrich Wagner, was injured to near full blindness (yes, they settled out of court and he got 120,000 Euros awarded in damages but that doesn't change that he's blind now), and the state premier of the time, Mr Stefan Mappus, didn't even show any sympathy at all.

My point is: When it comes to prestige projects such as BER or Stuttgart 21, politicians can be ten times as ruthless.

Setting up a parliamentary Investigation committee does not Need too many votes. The Opposition is usually successful in doing that and such committees exist right now. But at the end of the day, the rusult is what everybody knows and seldomly any changes are made on that Basis. Or take a citizens vote, such as to Keep TXL open. OK, such a Referendum is not legally binding, but when His Royal Highness, the Reigning Mayor of Berlin bluntly rejects the result , how can there be hope that the Berlin Senate and the Brandenburg Parliament as well as the state govwrnments learn from mistakes made.

I mean , this is a minor issue, but the fact that this terminal is called "BER" and is usually proneunced "the BAER"" because of the cities mascot animail, certifies that the politicians don't know what they are doing, cementing a wroing decision for decades. A single Airport which is too smal from the beginning uses what is usually a City Designator for multiple Airport cities, like NYC, LON TYO etc. You will never find that on a bagggae tag or a cargo lable., instead ot is JFK etc. The correct way should have been BER as a City Designator, Keep TXL and Change the Regime Airport SXF into BBI for Berlin Brandenburg International. The small place in India would have gladly sold ther BBI to Berlin.

That way there would have been a BBI with the old SXF now called Terminal 2 and the new terminal which would be .T1. So. Berlin is and always will be Posemuckel.

Not sure if this question has been asked amongst this long running debate, but at what stage exactly was it decided the new BER was going to be too small and unfit for purpose,surely someone must have realised well before a single ounce of concrete was poured ?

It won´t be too small, there will just be too much demand. And demand can be regulated by the government.

seahawk wrote:

It won´t be too small, there will just be too much demand. And demand can be regulated by the government.

The DDR failed brilliantly. In our world demand is decided by the market, not by any Government. Unless you want to have the DDR back. I mean, this thread Shows what happens when the Government gets involved into Details

JannEejit wrote:

Not sure if this question has been asked amongst this long running debate, but at what stage exactly was it decided the new BER was going to be too small and unfit for purpose,surely someone must have realised well before a single ounce of concrete was poured ?

The BER terminal is planed for 27 million pax, If it would have been finished on time, it would have about covered the needs than. Currently the whole Berlin air traffic are 33.4 million pax. Extensions to bring the airport to 45 million capacity were planed. This extensions are included in the building permit. An additional low cost terminal is planned since 2016. To put up a comparison, MUC has around 44 million pax.

As it is the terminal would have to cover the current throughput of TXL (planed capacity 12 million) at current 20.5 million pax. The SXF terminal, being the low cost terminal, is not supposed to close, so it should cover its 12.9 million pax. The size is a red herring in this discussion, if the airport would have finished on time, it would have covered the traffic at that time and I assume the two satellites bringing the airport to nominal 45 million pax would be busy being build.

The airport has two fully independent runways, that should allow something well in excess of 400,000 movements. Current movements for TXL and SXF combined are around 375,000 movements.

One should also not forget, that in the beginning of the planning, there were the airlines, including LH, asking for one combined airport.

Market Forces prevail over any Guvernmint . If that Basic rule (it is not an ideology) is ignored by any government a black market will start.

What seagawk meant is that the Berlin City/state government really thinks that they can manipulate the market rather than providing adequate Airport capacity which is their duty. The fact that they are wrong does not scare me, what scares me is that These Clowns really believe that they can manipulate the People..

Government legislators has the legal right to impose any kind of rules they choose. Of course if the voters don't like it, those legislators will be voted out of office at the next set of elections. But while they remain in office, as long as they don't act against any existing laws, they can generally do as they like.
Government also has the right to determine what aerodromes are permitted to act as commercial passenger airports (or not) and what rules apply to how those airports should function. If the Berlin / Brandenburg want to pass a law permanently closing Tegel, Schoenefled and BBI they can do so - stupid, but legal. Again if legislators do something the voters don't like, they eventually are voted out of office.

There are plenty of ways for a Government to choke off demand at a particular airport when there are no viable competitors nearby - e.g. imposing taxes and charges on aircraft of certain sizes or operations at particular times of day. Whether that's a good idea depends on course on your point of view, but it's certainly possibly for Government to squeeze the new BBI airport (when it opens) to function in a certain way if legislators choose to do so.

I don't see a black market happening - but I would see a) huge demand for alternate products such as flights at Hamburg, Leipzig, Dresden Erfurt andRostock (and even opening up of old Cold War airfields in eastern Germany) b) reduction in number of tourists visiting Berlin and c) Berlin residents finding that it starts to get expensive to fly anywhere out of Berlin. An eventual corollary is that companies start to find Berlin less attractive a place to do busines, etc, etc.

In summary, legilsators squeezing BBI to meet their drreams would not lead to any kind of 'black market' in airports (too hard to replicate without police and the courts noticing), just demand for alternate products and damage to Berlin's economy

PanHAM wrote:

seahawk wrote:

It won´t be too small, there will just be too much demand. And demand can be regulated by the government.

The DDR failed brilliantly. In our world demand is decided by the market, not by any Government. Unless you want to have the DDR back. I mean, this thread Shows what happens when the Government gets involved into Details

In the end it does not matter what I want, as in Berlin Red-Red-Green enjoy a clear majority in the recent opinion polls. And that is why the whole debate is so pointless, because it is not a matter of not being able to build a working airport, it is a problem of not wanting and failing having no consequences. But it is Berlin, so who is surprised? They will probably tell you that a too small airport has positive effects, as it reduces the the CO2 emissions.

PanHAM wrote:

but when His Royal Highness, the Reigning Mayor of Berlin bluntly rejects the result , how can there be hope that the Berlin Senate and the Brandenburg Parliament as well as the state govwrnments learn from mistakes made.

And the worst part about it: People in Berlin would STILL vote SPD and SED, I mean Die Linke into power. The same in Brandenburg. I mean sure, there's no way of telling if a CDU led state government would have dome things better than WoWi or Herr Müller as far as BER is concerned, but maybe people just don't want another Eberhard Diepgen to get into power.

We have news! We have news! We have news!

BER's opening was scheduled for October 2020... but...

TÜV Rheinland (Technischer Überwachungsverein, technical supervision association, a company that inspects objects like public buildings, rollercoasters, ships and other stuff for adherence to safety standards) and a project planning company have made a non-public report about BER's status.

- electrical cables are delayed by 11 months, even according to the newest project plan
- there are 1415 known problems, 863 of which are "essential"
- the probability of hitherto unknown delays is bigger than 50%

The internal report was made in April 2018.

https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2018-05/ ... -baustelle

David

And more fun:

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/flug ... 87052.html

The same report says that essential problems involve smoke removal, water sprinklers and fire alarms, the emergency power supply and illumination. Concerning fire alarms and smoke removal, they have zero buffer time anymore if they still plan to open in October 2020.

Siemens and Bosch were contracted to program the smoke removal thingamajig till end of the year. But they still haven't received the necessary planning documents from the construction company.


David

Television broadcaster RBB just reported that 70% of BER's cable ducts are permanently under water.

Somebody on twitter commented: "And when it rains, it's 100%?"

Report: https://www.rbb24.de/politik/Flughafen- ... asser.html

Several ducts have been built in 2010 and 2011, but without a water runoff. Ever since then. cables have been permanently under water.


David

Which means cables will need to be replaced soon again because of corrosion. Even the plastic covering won't protect those cables from the elements. And guess who's picking up the tab for that again???

Some recent claimed to be confidential paper has been published by the same local station RBB claiming the BER airport requested some softer building rules as it is unable to satisfy the full building standards to get certified in time. The government of the state of Brandenburg refused this. It smells like the next delay is inbound for landing. Not the last one I fear.

downdata wrote:

They should just open it. Who cares if their fire safety is not up to standard, its not like airport goes on fire every second day

Some facts may prove you right. The currant FRG fire protection regulations are so extreme that not amy theatre or opera house had been destroyed for decades. But 3 (three!) of them have been severely damaged in recent years by WATER. Just because the over precautious sprinklers had started by accidents. Namely, this happened at "Landestheater Coburg", "Staatsoperette Dresden" and "Deutsche Oper Berlin".

We have had a bad airport fire at Düsseldorf airport with people dying. One reason why the regulations got so strict. But they were known before and are no reason for the delays. However the substandard built quality and lack of documentation are.

Bright side, the people in Denver, back in the nineties, do not look so bad.

I still wonder how it's possible to say "Hey, company A, build a cable duct. Hey, company B, put in the cables for the runway lighting. Hey, company C, put in those other cables."

And no company is told which specificiations to follow. So, at BER, there are cable bundles several feet thick. And cable ducts without water runoffs... "Are these plans correct?" - "Yes." - "Oooohkay, so let's save our money and make no runoff."

David

It was the stupid idea to save money and help local businesses. Imho they should scrap the terminal and have somebody competent build a new one. And not something shiny, but something practical with simple smoke removal system, simply fire protection and simple installations.

Noshow wrote:

We have had a bad airport fire at Düsseldorf airport with people dying. One reason why the regulations got so strict. But they were known before and are no reason for the delays. However the substandard built quality and lack of documentation are.

I still remember being there in December 1997 and still smelling some of the stench from the fire.

Fire regulations cannot be an excuse for everything. The problems that led to the delays at BER can be narrowed down to incompetence and the need to cut corners whereever you can. Not to mention that this is a prestige project for the city of Berlin most of all, so the capital can have a more modern airport and not those "dumps" that used to be Tempelhof and are today Tegel and Schönefeld for the authorities in Berlin and Brandenburg. And even worse: That airport bears the name of Willy Brandt, former mayor of (West) Berlin and former German chancellor.

Noshow wrote:

Some recent claimed to be confidential paper has been published by the same local station RBB claiming the BER airport requested some softer building rules as it is unable to satisfy the full building standards to get certified in time. The government of the state of Brandenburg refused this.

This was going already around as a rumour in the fire protection scene in Germany for some years. Usually, when you're planning something and you cannot fulfil all requirements you could prove that some other measures will compensate or you ask for an exemption. Apparently planners based much work on getting several exemptions, or with insufficient or unproven compensation measures. So when the authority having jurisdiction denied to accept this design, there was a big surprise on planners and builders side, and the patchworking began, instead of filing a proper design...

seahawk wrote:

It was the stupid idea to save money and help local businesses. Imho they should scrap the terminal and have somebody competent build a new one.

BER terminal does not look shiny at all. When you see the pictures it resembles something quite functional (remember it was meant to be the only commercial terminal in the capital of Europe's largest economy). It is not like BER was some crazy curvy building out of Zaha Hadid's mind. To me it looked almost "soviet" in its simplicity.

seahawk wrote:

but something practical with simple smoke removal system, simply fire protection and simple installations.

That would be another major concern. From the reports, it looks like BER terminal is a fire hazard no matter all the changes they make. So in the unlikely event they open in 2021, what would happen if there is a fire, let's say, in 2023? Other than the (hopefully not) lifes lost, what would happen with the airport itself (but that time TXL should be closed). Would it operate normally or would Berlin just have no airport (other than the old SXF terminals)?

PanHAM wrote:

seahawk wrote:

It won´t be too small, there will just be too much demand. And demand can be regulated by the government.

The DDR failed brilliantly. In our world demand is decided by the market, not by any Government. Unless you want to have the DDR back. I mean, this thread Shows what happens when the Government gets involved into Details

It is not government incompetence as such. It is politically and/or ideology driven sabotage at work here.

Similar effects from the ministry of transport.
Been CSU from Bavaria led for some years now.
Nothing beyond Bavaria works.
Kiel Kanal new locks and expanding the still 1910 width and depth for bigger ships : boondogled.
refurbishing one lane of the Rendsburg street tunnel took 5+ years, another 5+ years for the other direction are expected.
( building took 3 years )
West Coast rail way is a a shambles.
completely over the top safety requirements have been set up for non commercial historic ships organization.

contrast:
Expansion of the A7 north of Hamburg to 8 lanes / 6 lanes progresses rather well. Ministry of transport is not involved
and joint supervision/coordination from Hamburg and Schleswig Holstein has been very successful.

.

Well, what is the government other than politically ideologized? The Berlin and Brandenbiurg state governments have to be taken into account for this FUBAR. Starting with famous Wowereit and his successors in Office have done Little to nothing to solve this mess.

The only Administration that can be taken seriously is the "Dahme/Spreewald County Administration, Standing solidly in NOT approving the self created mes unless the work has been done to the book.

Take the famous mvong escalator coming up from the trainstation, with a height difference of a few centimeters at the end, They had several years to solve thaat Problem , I think nothing has been done. No one will be able to use that escalator, not even without baggage.

MUC is not a comparison, they have building Permit on Hand, valid for 15 years, which means that they have until 2030 to start with runway 3. I bet that they will find a solution, it wouldn't be Bavaria otherwise.

The way this endless Story is going it might well be that I win my bet, Berlin without a working Airport becomes more and more a future reality. These political Clowns will open FUBAR international and Close down TXL half a year later and then the County that supervises the certification will find something to Close BER.

Bingo, that would be it.

SCQ83 wrote:

seahawk wrote:

It was the stupid idea to save money and help local businesses. Imho they should scrap the terminal and have somebody competent build a new one.

BER terminal does not look shiny at all. When you see the pictures it resembles something quite functional (remember it was meant to be the only commercial terminal in the capital of Europe's largest economy). It is not like BER was some crazy curvy building out of Zaha Hadid's mind. To me it looked almost "soviet" in its simplicity.

seahawk wrote:

but something practical with simple smoke removal system, simply fire protection and simple installations.

That would be another major concern. From the reports, it looks like BER terminal is a fire hazard no matter all the changes they make. So in the unlikely event they open in 2021, what would happen if there is a fire, let's say, in 2023? Other than the (hopefully not) lifes lost, what would happen with the airport itself (but that time TXL should be closed). Would it operate normally or would Berlin just have no airport (other than the old SXF terminals)?

The architecture might not be shiny, but the buildings system are overly complicated. The fire and smoke system is a major design error and even if they can get it functional, it will still an overly complicated and expensive system to maintain. And if they ever need to do some changes to the building the fun starts all over again. A simple system where the smoke is escaping through passive system while fresh air is actively pumped in, works so much easier and you do not have to consider the air pressure differences between different parts of the building and how hard it would become to open doors.

BER is just way to small. Whenever and if it ever opens. Small aisles long ways to walk not enough baggage caroussels.

flyingturtle wrote:

I still wonder how it's possible to say "Hey, company A, build a cable duct. Hey, company B, put in the cables for the runway lighting. Hey, company C, put in those other cables."

And no company is told which specificiations to follow. So, at BER, there are cable bundles several feet thick. And cable ducts without water runoffs... "Are these plans correct?" - "Yes." - "Oooohkay, so let's save our money and make no runoff."

The company I now work at functions this way, but it's a software outfit. Next to no documents for anything. Every time a new piece of hardware or programmable logic shows up it's a big guessing game. It's a wonder anything works at all.

PanHAM wrote:

Well, what is the government other than politically ideologized? The Berlin and Brandenbiurg state governments have to be taken into account for this FUBAR. Starting with famous Wowereit and his successors in Office have done Little to nothing to solve this mess.

The only Administration that can be taken seriously is the "Dahme/Spreewald County Administration, Standing solidly in NOT approving the self created mes unless the work has been done to the book.

Take the famous mvong escalator coming up from the trainstation, with a height difference of a few centimeters at the end, They had several years to solve thaat Problem , I think nothing has been done. No one will be able to use that escalator, not even without baggage.

Great work, fellas!

I thought so. Tis leaves one speechless. How can you, as a professional engineer, build somethng like that without questioning the plan?But even if, they had years to correct that hazard.

LTU932 wrote:

HHScot wrote:

At this rate I might be retired before it opens! What started off as a running joke is now a Grade A embarrassment!

An embarrassment is an understatement. Remember when people were talking about "Deutsche Wertarbeit" (German craftsmanship) being one of the things Germany is most famous for? Well, in this case, the incompetence of the people who planned the thing, the politicians and their ego trips (like Eberhard Diepgen, Manfred Stolpe, federal transportation minister Wissmann, maybe even Helmut Kohl himself, all back in the mid 90's), etc. have led to BER becoming a black hole for all the money the German tax payers have paid the federal government. It might have been better to build the new HAM in Kaltenkirchen to alleviate the problem Hamburg has with a landlocked airport with no room for expansion than to waste money on prestige projects for a place, that only gets that money because it's our nation's capital.

That is incorrect as far as the construction goes. Heck, even the recommended site by the airport commission was a different one. these delays are entirely the fault of the socialist governments of Berlin and brandenburg, which have rejected more suitable sites, changed and added features of the construction planning and rejected a professional project management.

This is an embarrassment for Berlin / Brandenburg, and a major slap in their arrogant lefty-loony faces. Airports elsewhere in Germany work well, very well.

Berlin manages to operate it's legacy airports beyound capacity. So that's something they can do. What they cannot do is build a new airport without major disfunctionalities and bring it up to standard. Tons of money and years of time didn't help.

Berlin and Brandenburg with their socialist governments do what socialists are good at,, the Administration of self created deficiency.. On top of that they are unable to adapt to changed situations. They still basically work with passenger and flight development statistics based on the mid 90s. TXL should be gradually improved to cope with growing traffic while that new terminal is deferred year by year. Socialism does npt work unless it goes along with capitalism. May be the comrades in Berlin and Potsdam should take some lessons in China.

Revelation wrote:

https://www.welt.de/img/wirtschaft/mobile146851990/2571621397-ci23x11-w780/Hauptstadtflughafen-BER-in-Schoenefeld-2.jpg

Let me guess. the escalator was ordered at one point ( long lead time! )
and some imbecile later on noticed that the upper floor must be
raised to accommodate installations in the ceiling
while keeping the planned headroom on the ground floor.

Nobody thought about giving notice to the escalator manufacturer.

That escalator is the only end in sight down there. And after years it still has not been exchanged for a longer one. Waiting for years and paying interest rates for being literally billions over budget they could buy some escalator every other week without noticing it financially. That's peanuts compared to the wasted billions.

Because there are still problems with the fire alarms and smoke detectors, some officials believe BER won't open in 2020.

Also, regarding the power and signal cables, are still more than 3000 defects to solve.

In Germish: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/prob ... 81134.html

flyingturtle wrote:

Because there are still problems with the fire alarms and smoke detectors, some officials believe BER won't open in 2020.

Hardly a surprise... and guess who'll have to pick up the tab for this.

They will hide any hard bad news from the public until the state of Brandenburg has had it's state parliament election this fall. Afterwards expect some "surprising" news about being not ready to open in 2020. (My speculation fueled by experience)

Election years are the worst years for real government transparency. Not that there is any but if there is, there's even less of it in an election year. Then again, I don't think anything will improve on Brandenburg's side of BER if CDU or anyone else kicks the SPD and Dietmar Woidke out of power.

TÜV Rheinland (an organization that makes safety reports on public buildings and other important stuff) reported that there are still 11519 faults to correct. That's nearly four times the previously published number.

A lot of stuff has to be dismantled, mainly in order to rebuild cable ducts, where a lot of electrical cables were laid in a hodgepodge manner.

At this moment, there is no buffer time left to open BER in 2020.

Sorry, only in German:

https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unter ... 66734.html

And actually nothing new besides that the Oct 2020 date is in danger of slipping yet again.

"A report by TÜV Rheinland had listed a total of 11,581 defects at the beginning of March, 9407 of which described the auditors as "significant deficiencies". The TÜV came to the conclusion that the planned schedule was particularly at risk in the sensitive areas of safety technology and fire protection. The risk of prolonged testing was "still considered high"."

This is truly insane. It's been under audit and reconstruction for several years and it still has nearly 10,000 issues.

The building will be such a cluster if it ever opens due to these repeated one-off fixes needed. It will just fall apart and no one will be able to maintain it.

for gods sake just demolish the whole terminal and build a new one it will take less time and cost less ...

OGLOBAL wrote:

for gods sake just demolish the whole terminal and build a new one it will take less time and cost less ...

In the time its taken so far, they probably could have demolished the terminal, rebuilt it, demolish it again and rebuilt it a third time and it probably would have taken less time and cost less!!!

HOly crap. What happened to German efficiency?

When did construction start?

wexfordflyer wrote:

HOly crap. What happened to German efficiency?

When did construction start?

This millennium, so not that long ago.

G E R M A N E N G I N E E R I N G ... planes will be replaced by hyperloops and flying cars by the time they open the damn airport