Climate change protesters rally at newly opened Berlin Airport

Dozens of climate change protesters rallied at the new Berlin Airport on Saturday as the much-delayed site opened at last.

The airport opened nine years late and in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, which has devastated air travel and tourism.

Protesters carried signs saying “Flying is so yesterday” and “BER opening cancelled due to the climate crisis”, using the code for the full name of Berlin-Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport.

The first plane to land was an EasyJet flight, a special service that took off from Tegel on the other side of the city. That airport will close next weekend. A Lufthansa plane landed minutes later.

The delays left Berlin relying on two outdated airports: Tegel, which served the west of the city, and Schoenefeld, which was once Communist East Berlin’s airport and which has been integrated into the new facility.

Tegel was creaking under the rising passenger numbers. Designed to handle about 2.5 million passengers a year, about 24 million people used the airport last year.

Engelbert Luetke Daldrup, chief executive of the city’s airports, expects about 10 million passengers to land in Berlin this year, compared with 36 million last year. BER’s current capacity is 40 million.

The new airport, which is owned by the German federal government and the states of Berlin and Brandenburg, cost more than $7 billion.

“With just one airport, we can make our business much more efficient,” EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren said.

Because of the pandemic, EasyJet is reducing its fleet based in Berlin to 18 planes from 34 and cutting 418 out of about 1,500 employees, while another 320 staff will work shorter hours until next June.