Safety is number one priority…

The new Berlin Brandenburg Airport will open later than planned. This con-clusion was reached by the airport operator in view of the latest findings gathered over the past few days. Up until now the project leadership team was convinced to be able to meet the deadline of the opening on 3 June, also with regard to the technical requirements concerning safety. Following several crisis meetings over the weekend, the project leadership team has reached the conclusion that the completion and subsequent acceptance tests of certain safety relevant installations was no longer possible by the planned opening date. The airport operating company therefore decided to change course 27 days before the planned opening to prevent any potential shortcomings in the area of safety.

In view of these developments, the airport operating company has decided to take the following steps:

• Preliminarily putting a stop to the move of air traffic from Schönefeld and Tegel to BER
• Deferral of the opening of the new airport until after the summer holi-day period

Recently the planned inauguration of the airport on 3 June 2012 has be-come a race against time, and at the moment 7,000 construction workers are currently working on Europe’s largest airport construction site. The Open Days on 12 and 13 May which were planned some time ago are not affected by the deferral of the opening date.