Ben Knight, der für das Magazin “EXBERLINER” schreibt, hat nach einer Korrespondenz per eMail einen Artikel zum BBI, meinem Buch und diesem Blog veröffentlicht. Im Folgenden das Anschreiben und der Artikel:
Email von Ben Knight vom 3.03.2010
Hallo Herr Welskop,
ich wollte mich nochmal für Ihre Hilfe bei meinem Artikel über das BBI bedanken. Ihren Beitrag hat den Artikel eine ganz wichtige Perspektive verleiht.
Leider ist der Artikel nicht online verfügbar – sondern nur in der aktuellen Ausgabe von EXBERLINER.
Anbei ist aber meine Word-Doc-Version. Soll ich Ihnen einen Belegexamplar schicken lassen?
Vielen Dank nochmal.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Ben Knight
Hier der Artikel, in dem sich bei meinem Namen ein Fehler eingeschlichen hat:
A big house for little people
They say it will be the last new airport to be built in Germany. As always, Berlin has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future, but the new Airport Berlin Brandenburg International ‘Willy Brandt’, or BBI, is now only 18 months from completion. But who will end up paying?
by Ben Knight
You may have wondered why the least-loved of Berlin’s three airports is also the one they have decided to extend. But don’t be fooled. If Schönefeld has any admirers, who grow dewy-eyed over the fake American diner next to the huge Easyjet queue, or the half-covered 400-metre walkway to the S-Bahn station, they too will have their souls crushed.
The BBI airport is not an extension of Schönefeld. It is another two kilometres further south, and will be a shiny, airy, glass-and-steel mini-colossus sprawled across the countryside. There has been some confusion over this, partly because the location is more or less the same – in fact, one of Schönefeld’s runways will be recycled to become one of BBI’s – and partly because Berlin Airports, the company that runs Berlin’s airports, often talks of an extension. This is apparently a conscious strategy to deflect the fears of a naturally conservative population. “There are always fears when something new like this is built,” says company spokesman Leif Erichsen.
In fact, the design of the new airport recalls Tempelhof more than it does Schönefeld. Approaching its main entrance by road, you enter the U-shaped building down the middle of the U, and it embraces you in a similar way to what has become the oversized concert venue at Tempelhof. The team of architects behind BBI, which includes the man responsible for Tegel, did try to echo some of Berlin’s classic buildings, liberally peppering the place with “architectonic elements ranging from Schinkel to Bauhaus,” according to the PR department.
Capacity equals cash
But modern mega-airports are not known for their artistic references, however much Schinkel might approve. Passengers pass through them mainly bored or frantic, and for the travel industry, an airport is measured by its passenger capacity – the number of passengers who fly to or from it in a year – and therefore how much money it makes.
The main reason for the construction of BBI is to increase Berlin’s air passenger capacity. BBI will open with a capacity of 25 to 27 million passengers a year – last year, both of Berlin’s airports together boasted 21 million – and with the help of ‘expansion modules,’ separate terminals to be built on the airfield in the years to come, this will increase up to 40 million. This would still not put BBI in the same league as the big European airports – Paris Charles de Gaulle has an annual turnover of around 50 million, and London Heathrow over 55 million – but it is more than enough to accommodate the projected increase in Berlin’s air traffic for a long time. Capacity is also increased radically by the fact that BBI’s two runways are over a mile apart, which means they will be able to operate independently. Construction on the first expansion module is expected to start in 2015.
No more cheap flights?
Critics have pointed out that a lot of Berlin’s tourists are attracted by the cheap flights. With its small airports, proximity to eastern Europe, and trendy image, Berlin is a dream for budget airlines, particularly Schönefeld, whose distance from the city centre meant that it had much lower airport fees than Tegel. Airport fees are the amounts that airlines must pay airports for the right to use airports.
“The airport fees will be higher than Schönefeld, and probably Tegel,” Erichsen admits. “But all our carriers have said they want to be part of BBI, and we intend to negotiate with them on the airport fees.” There are no figures on how much the increase will be, but it seems unlikely that the airlines will be able to keep the ticket prices down. That is, if Berlin does generate the passengers. If not, BBI will have to lower its airport fees to accommodate the cheap airlines, and the airport will become a giant, expensive Easyjet hangar.
Giant house with little inhabitants
Some people think that BBI is just a colossal and hubristic mistake. BBI’s official budget is €2.4 billion, provided in loans by the European Investment Bank and investment banks belonging to the states of Berlin and Brandenburg.
In order to pay this money back, critics fear that BBI will have to attract a capacity that the city cannot provide. There will not be enough passengers to attract more expensive airlines, larger planes and long-haul flights, so the budget airlines will take over. A lot is being banked on the fact that the airport itself, along with the logistics and business park being developed next to it, will generate more investment and passengers.
Frank Wiskop published a book last autumn entitled BBI – A New Berlin Banking Scandal? in which he picked apart BBI’s finances, and painted the project as a mini-financial crisis in the making. He also reports the latest developments in a blog. It emerged recently that the planned privatisation of BBI after its completion would be delayed. Wiskop smelled a rat:
“Privatisation or partial privatisation of BBI is the litmus test for its success! If privatisation is impossible, BBI will be a flop, and will generate immense losses, year by year! The only political calculations of those in power is how they can regain these losses from the taxpayer, and continue to plunder these two poor states (Berlin and Brandenburg).”
For Wiskop, it is a disaster that developed out of the hubris of post-Wall Berlin – it has simply not become the high-powered, dense metropolis many predicted in the mid-nineties, when the BBI was first conceived. “In the meantime, more and more mistakes crept into the project, and the opening of BBI was permanently delayed,” says Wiskop. “This reduced the original potential to a minimum, and all that remained is the propaganda about how great it would be, even though the budget airlines will dominate, and the Berlin airports continue to have the worst turnover in Germany.”
But if you, as a Berlin taxpayer, do end up paying for it, you might take comfort in the sense of history. Erichsen believes this is the last airport that will be built from scratch in Germany. Berlin is the last major city without a large, modern airport. “Where else can they
