Berlin Brandenburg International Airport
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Berlin Brandenburg International Airport (Flughafen Berlin-Brandenburg International) is the tentative new name of Schönefeld International Airport (Flughafen Berlin-Schönefeld) in Brandenburg, Germany, near Berlin, slated for completion in 2011.
BBI will bundle together the three current airports of Berlin, as Schönefeld will be much larger than it is in its current state, while the other two airports, Tempelhof International Airport and Tegel International Airport, will close in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
Berlin has three airports as a consequence of the division by the victors of World War II. Each one served different parts of the city. Following German reunification in the 1990s, a single airport would be more effective and would reduce noise from the two innercity airports. The Berlin City Council has indicated that they cannot afford to keep three separate airports open for very much longer. Also, the cumulative capacity of Berlin's three airports was in late 2003 15.5 million. Current prognoses indicate that the city would need to surpass this before 2010. A single new airport would increase this to at least 20 million initially and around up to 30 million before 2030. This would enable Berlin to come near the masses of flights of other European capitals like London has with Heathrow International Airport, or Paris with Charles De Gaulle International Airport (which is actually in the suburb of Roissy).
However, Frankfurt is still the undisputed financial capital of Germany, and has Frankfurt International Airport – Germany's busiest airport at about 40-50 million passangers annually. Munich is at second place in Germany with Franz Josef Strauß International Airport roughly 20 million passangers. Despite the fact that Berlin does not have the economic prosperity Frankfurt and Munich have, it hopes to establish itself in third place.
External links
- Berlin Brandenburg International Airport Homepage (http://www.berlin-airport.de/bbi/rubEnglish)
- Opponents (http://www.airport-bbi.de)
- Opponents (german) (http://www.flughafen-bbi.de)