BER Is Thinking Big Again

BER eventually outlived its reputation as an eternal construction site. Now it is getting a new one. Under a 2022 decision, expanding the government airport at BER was supposed to cost around €344 million. According to the Taxpayers' Association, which has included the project in its latest "Black Book" of public waste, it could reach up to €2.5 billion. Everything is due to be finished by 2038 at the latest.

Plans include hangars, administrative buildings, around 1,100 new jobs and 26 aircraft parking positions. The government's flight readiness service currently has 15 planes and three helicopters. So parking is being built, just in case, for a fleet that does not exist, at an airport that itself existed only on paper for years.

Berlin learned exactly one lesson from BER: if the schedule will not hold anyway, put it in the next decade right away.

The Taxpayers' Association calls it a prestige project and wants it stopped. The federal government probably sees things differently. A government terminal is, after all, the only place in the country where departures are guaranteed to be on time: the plane simply waits until the minister arrives.