German source:
http://www.bild.de/reise/fluege/flughafen-berlin-brandenburg-international/ber-zu-klein-planungsfehler-26601568.bild.html
Note that this newspaper, while the largest in Germany, is kind a sensationalist and known to embellish stories from time to time. They are best compared with The Sun in Britain.
Translated summary from German:
____________
The new airport under construction for Berlin, Berlin Brandenburg International, is not only too late and over budget by 1,7 billion euro, it’s also likely to be too small! The airport was designed to handle 27 million passengers per year. The combined passenger numbers for the airports that will be replaced by BBI (Tegel & Schöneveld) is 25 million.
Aviation experts predict that if growth in air travel continues at its current pace, the new airport will already be at or very near its limit when it’s finally opened.
According to Bild aviation experts already raised the alarm in 2007. Since then the airport design was already expanded with a new hall with 20 check-in desks, but it still won’t be enough.
According to the airport autorities the two runways should have a theoretical capacity of 45 million passengers. There is talk of a potential third runway as well. But according to Bild this is completely useless, since the terminal can’t handle that many people.
According to Bild it is typical to calculate 30% growth potential when designing a new airport (-terminal). This was not done for the new Berlin airport.
By: Matt-100 - 10th October 2012 at 15:15
That’s the long term plan though. For which no money has yet been reserved. With current growth forecast this should not be the long term plan, but the short term plan, with the long term plan probably more in the 60 million range.
At the moment Berlin airports handle 25 million, as established in the article. Do you seriously think those numbers will more than double in the foreseeable future?
Berlin has a population of around 3.5 million – yet you’re saying it needs an airport large enough to handle traffic similar to Paris or London?
Of course, you could be suggesting Berlin is turned into a hub for connecting passengers? But isn’t that what Frankfurt does? Few European countries have two hub cities, there simply isn’t the market to sustain two.
By: tenthije - 10th October 2012 at 14:59
Don’t you just hate it when newspapers don’t give the full story? :p
“The airport, whose completion has already been pushed back from 2011 and which will serve as Air Berlin’s main hub, aims to handle as many as 27 million passengers annually to start, with longer term plans to grow capacity to as much as 45 million passengers.”
That’s the long term plan though. For which no money has yet been reserved. With current growth forecast this should not be the long term plan, but the short term plan, with the long term plan probably more in the 60 million range.
By: Matt-100 - 10th October 2012 at 14:57
Don’t you just hate it when newspapers don’t give the full story? :p
“The airport, whose completion has already been pushed back from 2011 and which will serve as Air Berlin’s main hub, aims to handle as many as 27 million passengers annually to start, with longer term plans to grow capacity to as much as 45 million passengers.”
That 45 million figure is taking into account expansion of both the runway and terminal building, not just the runway as Bild would have you believe. I mean, who calculates runway capacity by the number of passengers it can handle anyway? Surely you calculate runway capacity by flights? You could have 100 Dash-8s landing or 100 A380s – the number of flights the runway can handle remains constant, but the number of passengers is open to interpretation.
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October 9, 2012 at 11:25 pm