Three into one
|
Posted Date: 01/03/2008
Issue: Airside International March 2008
Publication: Airside International
Airport managers responsible for redeveloping Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport into what will become the new Berlin Brandenburg International (BBI) – the German capital’s sole airport – have needed to dig deep into reserves of patience. Planning for BBI began back in 1996, but the proposal was held up by a series of political and environmental objections and it was not until March 2006 when a German Administrative Court ruling finally gave the go-ahead for ground to be broken. After a decade of wrangling, work on the largest infrastructure project in eastern Germany finally began in September of that year.
“Approval processes in Germany tend to last too long – and complicate the establishment of a market oriented and up-to-date airport,” comments Dr Rainer Schwarz, Chief Executive Officer, Berlin Airports. But now, with the first full year of construction behind him, Schwarz is confident that the new airport is on track to open in 2011. It is then that Berlin Tegel, one of two current inner city airports, will close and all air traffic for the Berlin-Brandenburg region will be concentrated at BBI. Berlin Tempelhof, the second inner city airport, will close in October of this year. At a cost of some €2 billion, BBI is hardly cheap, but nor is it extravagantly expensive compared with other major new airports elsewhere. Financing for the project is shared between Berlin Airports’ own revenues (€440 million), the cities of Berlin, Brandenburg and the Federal Republic (€430 million) – the airport’s shareholders – and the remainder coming from bank credits.
Together with improved motorway links and a future rail link with Dresden, BBI is one of three major projects anticipated to contribute greatly to Berlin-Brandenburg’s wider urban redevelopment. Berlin Airports expects the resulting expansion of labour markets and growth in passenger numbers to generate more than 39,000 additional jobs by 2012, while the total employment effect of BBI will account for a further 73,000 jobs, it says. The development of BBI is also timely from an air traffic point of view, with aggressive marketing in recent years having seen Berlin’s three airports now handle a total of nearly 20 million passengers in 2007.
Schönefeld, which is located to the south of the city, has shown particularly strong growth, thanks in large part to the development of the low cost sector. Over the past four years, the airport has trebled its passenger volume from 1.7 million to a little over six million passengers, with low cost carriers accounting for nearly 80% of all traffic. “In recent years, Schönefeld has been one of the most successful and rapidly growing airports in Europe,” says Schwarz.
However, it is the business travel-oriented Tegel that remains Berlin’s busiest airport, with some 13.2 million passengers in 2007 (up 12% on 2006). Meanwhile, Tempelhof – famed for its role during the Berlin Airlift after the Second World War – still offers regional connections, but with just 350,000 passengers in 2007 it is very much winding down ahead of its closure later this year.
BBI progress
And Berlin Airports promises to continue the hard sell for Tegel and Schönefeld ahead of the transfer of all traffic to BBI. On moving to the new airport, carriers will find a new facility designed with short distances between the airfield, ramp and terminal building, with the latter located between two parallel runways capable of operating independently.
The authorities have allowed up to 360,000 movements per year, with the airport subject to a night curfew from 12am to 5am. Berlin Airports is still waiting to hear what restrictions will be imposed between 10pm and 12am and from 5am to 6am.
The new BBI – which will be A380 compatible – will be what Schwarz describes as a “peripheral hub”, offering mainly intra-European point-to-point traffic complemented by select long haul connections. “We have a single roof concept with all traffic bundled into one central terminal where all kinds of airlines will find the services they need,” he says.
According to Schwarz, the goal is to establish a hub function to the US and especially to the Far East. “New aircraft models such as the 787 and A350 strengthen the position of peripheral hubs because they make it possible to operate intercontinental flights cost-effectively with only about 250 passengers.” On opening, BBI will be equipped with an initial 16 boarding bridges and 65 aircraft parking stands and offer a capacity of up to 25 million passengers. Depending on demand, the airport will be expanded in phases to accommodate up to 40 million passengers.
The work, which will see Schönefeld’s footprint increase by some 970 hectares to 1,470 hectares, has already involved the relocation of the village of Diepensee and parts of a second village, Selchow – a process that Schwarz describes as having been “relatively smooth”. The relocation, which involved 370 residents, was governed by agreements made in 1999 between the two communities and the airport owners: the cities of Berlin and Brandenburg and the federal government. According to a ‘new for old’ principle, the agreement stipulated that new dwellings had to be equal to what residents enjoyed before the relocation, including gardens and garages. Former residents of Diepensee now live in the newly created Diepensee district of nearby Königs Wusterhausen, while most of the residents relocated from Selchow moved to Gross Ziethen, just south of Berlin.
Looking forward
The largest project currently underway on the BBI site is the construction of the underground railway station which also forms the foundations for the new midfield terminal. However, there have already been significant developments in terms of airfield remodelling – a task made slightly more complicated by the challenge of shifting an existing airport to the south.
As part of the operational juggling required, the old north runway at Schönefeld was closed for good in November to make way for a new section of motorway that, when complete in May, will give direct links to the airport and shorten journey times from the city centre.
The closure of the north runway will come as a relief to residents of nearby Bohnsdorf who have endured a temporary increase in noise due to additional movements over the past few months. This was necessary while work was carried out on the existing south runway (which will become the north runway at BBI), including the creation of four new access taxiways and four rapid exit taxiways. Since 1 December all flights have since switched back to the remodelled south runway. Construction of the actual terminal will start in mid 2008, quickly followed by work on a new 4,000-metre south runway – at €270 million, one of the biggest and most costly projects of all. The runway will, of course, be a crucial contributor to what will be the airport’s central asset – capacity that will last for decades.
“When BBI opens, the German capital will be the only major city in Europe with new airport capacity,” says Schwarz.
Greener thinking
Acutely aware of sensitivities highlighted during the lengthy approval process, Berlin Airports is keen to emphasise efforts to reduce the environmental impact of the construction of BBI. It also argues strongly that the future concentration of Berlin’s air traffic at just one site offers a significant environmental benefit in itself. “Concentrating all of Berlin’s air traffic at a single location offers ecological benefits over the current airport system in terms of reducing land use and disturbances from noise and traffic,” contends Schwarz. Certainly, with the closure of both Tempelhof and, eventually, Tegel, the relocation of air traffic to BBI on the outskirts of the city should mean that hundreds of thousands of Berliners no longer have to live with aircraft noise.
In the meantime, residents of Schönefeld will be protected to a large extent by the conditions imposed by the planning permission decision. This includes a noise protection programme that enables all private households, schools, nursing homes and other facilities within a designated zone to implement (and claim for) protection measures. The programme covers around 42,000 people in total.
Meanwhile, a variety of landscape and water protection measures have been incorporated into the construction itself, with detailed monitoring designed to minimise ecological damage during work on the airfield. This includes protecting trees – and planting new ones to compensate for any losses where unavoidable – and the relocation of several thousand frogs and toads to newly built areas of wetland by ecologists. The planning concept also includes the use of heat recycling systems and the possible incorporation of regenerative energy solutions such as geothermal systems and rainwater for cooling. “The development engineers have placed a high value on ensuring that the individual buildings and structures achieve optimum energy consumption,” explains Schwarz.
Related Headlines
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
Issue Advertisers
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > |
