Berlin's airways tied by red tape

Germany's reborn capital Berlin faces the prospect of airline chaos way into the next century as major carriers blast the city's transportation policies and plans to build a new super-airport are mired in squabbles.

Berlin is alone among major world capitals with no single airport taking trans-continental traffic. Its three existing ports for arrival and departure are spread out across the metropolis turning connecting flights into little more than expensive jokes.

This week a secret memorandum was leaked to a Berlin newspaper. The memo to Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen came from leading world airlines seeking a centralisation of policy and practices. They complain that many of the regulations surrounding flying in to Berlin hark back to the days of the cold war when allied planes supplied the city.

The representatives of Lufthansa, United and numerous other carriers said: "Ten years have passed since re-unification and it is still not possible to discern the underpinnings of a workable airport system in Berlin. It is a system that must be changed and soon."

Air transportation in Berlin is a hodge-podge of flights in and out of three different airports - Tegel, Tempelhof and Schoenefeld. The new Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport, BBI, is planned for 2007 but might not be completed until 2010 as complex legal wrangling now comes into the fray.

BBI will cost almost three billion pounds to complete and is scheduled to be constructed at Schoenefeld which will be dramatically increased in size. Under an agreement between Berlin and the neighbouring state of Brandenburg, Tegel and Tempelhof will be closed when BBI opens.

But those plans were turned on their heads two months ago when the courts ruled the decision by the city and state governments to build was invalid. The Brandenburg Supreme Court said there were "irregularities" in the bidding that gave the contract to an Essen- based consortium. These legal plans could put construction start plans back by as much as three years.

The building of the airport is further complicated by labyrinthine bureaucracy of the kind business leaders bemoan in conducting their day to day affairs. The courts have said there is a legal requirement for the builder of the airport to take on the running of the three existing airports - knowing they will be shut when BBI comes on stream.

"Why would anyone want to do this given that Tegel, Tempelhof and Schoenefeld are saddled with debts of 650 million marks (#220 million)" said Erich Mainer, a transportation analyst in Frankfurt. "The builder of the new airport is being asked to assume this massive debt burden of the old sites. It just doesn't make any sense."

The main problem for Berlin's current system is that the airports which serve it are so far apart. This made sense when Berlin was a capitalist island in a sea of communism but makes no practical or fiscal sense today.

Airports only make money when they play host to passengers catching connecting flights. Around 50% of passengers who pass through the Rhein-Main airport in Frankfurt, Germany's leading international gateway, are connecting to another plane. In Berlin that number is 3%.

Berlin politicians are frustrated to be in charge of the capital at the centre of Europe, with no possibility of catching a transcontinental plane. Recently mayor Diepgen travelled to America to plead with major carriers to launch a service for this country but was told by airlines including Delta and Continental that first and business class demands meant such a service would be economically unviable.

"Berlin is now faced with the prospect of having no inter- continental service for years and years to come," added Herr Mainer. "It makes the city feel a little small."

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