Berlin Brandenburg
 

It's with great relief and some sadness that I can report that Flughafen Berlin-Brandenburg "Willy Brandt" (BER) opened for business today. The first two flights (Easyjet U23110 from TXL and Lufthansa LH2020 from MUC) just landed half an hour ago. After eight years of delays and quite some scandal, this hot mess of an airport project finally goes operational. The deep irony is that BER opens with this pandemic hitting aviation and everybody else hard, so there will be not much business at BER in the foreseeable future. And as you might guess from my handle on this humble forum, I am also a bit sad because this means that my favorite neighborhood airport of the last 30 years will be closed for good. Goodbye, TXL.

AFAIK Tegel will be kept on standby for another six months. Could any non-scheduled flight still land at Tegel during this time?

Yes, TXL will be kept operational for another six months. Don't know about actual flights, though. Last day of regular ops will be Nov 7. On Nov 8, a final Air France flight will depart to Paris CDG. First scheduled flight to land at TXL in 1960 also was an AF. German Air Force will continue chopper service for our beloved government from TXL for a couple of years. The airport buildings and grounds will be converted to a university campus, business sites and living areas.

Are there any plans for the B707 that has been sitting in the grass at TXL for many years? It has a very interesting history. https://digitalcosmonaut.com/2016/be...ed-boeing-707/

I heard it will be chopped. No museum is interested and its hard to move anywhere else.

Like the flight numbers and the fact the first to land was a UK reg aircraft

Wasn't Tegel "the new airport" back in the late 1960's? I have vague memory of it being able to handle some traffic that Tempelhof could not (747s? maybe), but I was school aged back then so details are foggy-to-gone at this point

The B707 has been rotting away there for years, interiors have been stolen. Lufthansa gifted the airframe to Technikmuseum Berlin, but they neither have the space nor financial means to restore it. So it's going to be demolished in the coming months, on Lufthansa's dime.

Good old TXL felt a bit like a trip into the 1980s from outside. That brutalist terminal building just belongs to a different epoch. Hopefully they will find a way to revive "Die S-Bahn" though, the Currywurst in that little red train carriage was really good.

I landed on the new Runway many moons ago, together with a whole lot other aircraft.
So not a british reg has been the first aircraft to land, it was a pegasus 737
That happened in 02.05.2015 during a trial for the new runway and renovation of the other runway.
First takeoff was a condor A320 at 0535 local and first landing was the pegasus 737 at 0555 local

The first touch and go was a german flightinstructor with a small cessna, he touched during the construction of the new runway nearly 8 years ago.
That was ilegal and he was fined about the landing.

Tegel was in the French Sector of Berlin, so of course AF was the first and now appropriately the last. Tempelhof was in the American Sector, and Gatow in the British Sector. In the Soviet Sector was Adlershof. Contrary to much belief, Schonefeld was not in the Soviet Sector, or in East Berlin, but (just) outside, in the mainstream DDR, which led to all sorts of additional bureaucratic issues to get there from West Berlin.

Take a look at this picture,
https://img.kaloo.ga/thumb?url=http%...size=1848x1040

Easyjet Europe,
OE-IZQ
cant see any UK reg on that plane.

Air traffic at Tegel when the wall was still up was all done by french controllers with american (USAF) doing the enroute .

That's another plane at Tegel. The one that landed first today was G-UZHF, see these pics for reference.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c8c8e6c056.jpg

inbalance

Well, I landed on it in 2014 (possibly 2013??) regularly, using ATR.
We were flying freight.
I believe it was for political / business reasons, so it could then be said that BER had opened.

Um, how did that condor A320 get there? Must have landed before it took off, surely? Therefore, before the pegasus 737?

The condor landed on the north runway and that belonged, until today, to berlin Schönefeld airport.

txl

Where did you get this information from if I may ask? When I spoke to the Press Lady in charge at Tegel 3ish months ago, there was substantial interest/plans that the Transport Museum was going to take over the Boeing. As for the interiors, despite having ventilation shafts installed - everything inside is covered in mold and unsalvageable - though I hadnt heard or seen images re:the interiors being stolen.

iamkosmonaut, didn't say that they cleaned out the whole thing, but some stuff has gone missing over the years.

The info pertaining to the plane being scrapped is from a recent article (a week ago) in Berliner Morgenpost quoted by Aero Telegraph:

Also confirmed by local tv news a couple of days ago. They tried to do salvage the thing, but apparently couldn't make it work.

It's not a Lufthansa airframe. During the wall it flew in, N-registered, as a political reminder that Lufthansa had some interest in going to Berlin. It had been some strange Boeing "gift" to Lufthansa. The livery used to be Lufthansa but not true to the original.

Does anyone remember the female ATC tower controller at TXL , possibly late 80,s early 90,s with the incredible sexy voice ? A sort of breathless Marlene Dietrich , but better.

That's the second time I'm reading about that sexy ATC controller in a TXL related thread after lederhosen mentioned it here. She must have left quite an impression. :}

Yes she certainly did ! I never took the the time to visit the tower during her shift as was possible in those days.
Probably preferred not to shatter the illusion, although one never knows ?

I thought it was Tempelhof that had the underground aircraft manufacturing workshops. Many floors of them. However, I've just read a long item and that was not mentioned.

What was / is in the flooded Tempelhof basements is anyone's guess and we will probably never know.
As for TXL I am also one of those regretting it. It was a truly unique place with definite drawbacks but also incredibly convenient.
Just wondering - is Easyjet not a LCC anymore :) ? I understand they are operating from "BER proper", not T5 ... ?

Less Hair

It's a rare 707-400 (Conway-engined), originally delivered to El Al, though Lufthansa has another example preserved at Hamburg so I can't see this one escaping its fate.

Rare or not. It has never been some Lufthansa aircraft. It's totally run down having been used for fire brigade and police training.
I you want to pick it up for free just give them a call.

Easyjet took over most of Air Berlin's destinations from TXL. They had 22 aircraft stationed at TXL and 12 at SXF. Due to the pandemic, they cut that to 18 aircraft. Still, Easyjet is considered important for BER and allowed to play with the legacy carriers at T1. BER plays an important role for their European network, they say.

It remains to be seen what U2's future role can be. For the time being LH group, that almost ignores Berlin as it already has too many hubs elsewhere, is now twice as big as the next player.

Contrary to much belief by journalists, BER is not a new airport, just an expansion of the Schonefeld site, so I don't quite get this "first landing". The north runway is the old Schonefeld main runway. In fact the new BER terminal is notably closer to that runway than the old Schonefeld terminal, which is rather a dogleg of a taxy away.

The new south runway also seems less convenient to the new terminal than the old Schonefeld runway, with a lengthy taxy to the west end (a German airport feature, though not as extreme as the northern runway at Frankfurt), so I suspect there will be many requests to use the old one anyway as much as possible.

Legally you are correct however Schönefeld's terminal had been intended to be closed and torn down for some new government VIP area and hangar space until recently. Now they keep on using it as separate "BER Terminal 5" for Ryanair and others.

Today's BER northern runway had been Schönefeld's former southern runway but it has been rebuilt since from scratch being a part of BER. One of the earliest parts being completed. Like the new BER tower that has been operating for years having met the original schedule.

The old northern runway at Schonefeld would have been a marginally useful addition to a key national airport, especially in snowy conditions (like Helsinki has three, so they can always keep one going in rotation). Quite why it was actually dug up and returned to grassland is not apparent. One result was that Schonefeld was reduced to a single runway airport. When it was reconstructed for the new arrangement, the new BER southern runway was brought into use, in 2015 I read, so quite how we can have a "first landing" when both the BER runways have been in use for years, in varying combinations, is not apparent. I'll put it down to something lost in translation. Although calling the old Schonefeld terminal the "new" BER Terminal 5 is notably being economical with the truth.

I haven't seen how the S-Bahn train now is organised with the split between terminal areas with separate stations. The frequent S-Bahn from Schonefeld station direct to the cross-city east-west line with all its stations through the city was notably more convenient than any transport option Tegel offered.

Legally the southern runway will start ops on November 4. What we see now -and have seen in the past- is special permit traffic. This is why the parallel landing opening on Saturday had to be cancelled due to IMC finally.

Just being curious I checked today´s departures since 6 a.m.. About 90% are EasyJet and Ryanair, some Wizz, but no Lufthansa flight. May be this is the direction BER is going. No doubt this is going to change in the days to come. Not all can be blamed to Convid-19, it looks like there is a tendency.

There is a changeover period ending on November 8th. I believe Lufthansa Group switches on the 7th.

The final flight at Tegel is a special flight by Air France on November 8th. After that it's kept on idle standby for six more months and then closed. Except for Luftwaffe helicopters that is.

I really don't get the "first touchdown was years ago" nitpicking here. While that might physically be the same runway, those flights were going to SXF. Same goes for the southern runway, which was in use on a special permit for a short time only while the northern runway was being redone. Yesterday's LH & EZY flights were the first two destined for BER ever.

And SXF Nordbahn had been closed and partly demolished in 2007 because they build an Autobahn through there.

LCC’s still flying from :mad: old ‘Terminal 5’ - what a dump.

T5 is not that bad. Two S-Bahn stops closer to downtown east and cheaper handling. Given, ugly DDR style, small and not comfortable. Like the very opposite to Changi.

Well, sorry, but I feel the nitpicking is pretending it's a new airport when it patently isn't. Everyone on Ryanair into BER is, it seems, landing on the same runway and going through the same terminal as ever. Now Manchester (just to take one of many examples) built a new runway, a new terminal, and a new rail station, and without all the construction snafu. But they didn't pretend it was a completely new airport.