"New Berlin airport gets planning go-ahead after years of setbacks"

Friday, August 13, 2004

New Berlin airport gets planning go-ahead after years of setbacks
The Associated Press


BERLIN - Plans for Berlin's new ?1.7 billion (US$2.1 billion)
international airport won approval from local authorities Friday, more
than a decade after the project was launched to establish the
once-divided German capital as a major air transport hub.

Under the plan, former East Berlin's Schoenefeld airport will be
expanded into the state-of-the-art Berlin-Brandenburg International by
2009 or 2010. Construction is to start in 2006 and two west Berlin
airports, Tegel and Tempelhof, are to close.

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit called Friday's approval by planning
officials a "giant step." But residents worried about increased noise
may yet cause new delays in court and financing details are unresolved.

The project is meant to end Berlin's status as an air-travel backwater
with few long-haul flights and no direct trans-Atlantic connections. The
capital's three airports handled 13.3 million passengers last year,
compared with 48.4 million for Frankfurt, Germany's main hub.

"Berlin and the region need a single airport to ensure our integration
into the international air transport system," Wowereit said, describing
it as "the biggest and most important infrastructure project for the
region's economic development."

However, backers have already scaled back their ambitions for
Schoenefeld. The approved plan foresees a capacity of 20 million
passengers per year, which could be expanded to 30 million _ half the
traffic originally envisaged.

Planning for a new Berlin airport started in 1992, two years after the
city and Germany were reunited.

Authorities settled in 1996 on Schoenefeld, about 20 kilometers (12
miles) from downtown Berlin in Brandenburg state, where officials view
it as key to reviving the struggling economy.

The plans have met with fierce local opposition. Residents are
threatening thousands of complaints to a federal court, citing increased
aircraft noise and the heightened risk of an accident close to built-up
areas.

"We will do everything we can to prevent this project," Wolfgang
Baumann, a lawyer for opponents, told ARD television. "The shortcomings
of the site are so major that this plan cannot be realized."

To address residents' concerns, Brandenburg state authorities ordered
that extensive noise protection barriers be built and said only
relatively quiet aircraft would be allowed to take off and land between
10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The airport was once slated for completion in 2007, but repeatedly has
been delayed.

Private investors withdrew from the project last year, leaving
cash-strapped state and federal governments to carry the costs. They
have yet to agree how the airport will be funded.

Berlin also is facing dogged resistance to another element of the plan _
the scheduled closure this October of Tempelhof airport, its most
central.

Several airlines are challenging the shutdown of the 81-year-old
airport, which was expanded into a huge complex under the Nazis and
became a lifeline for West Berlin during the Berlin airlift of 1948-49.


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