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Berlin Schönefeld Airport

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Berlin-Schönefeld International Airport

Flughafen Berlin-Schönefeld
Summary
Airport typePublic
OperatorBerlin Airports
ServesBerlin, Germany
LocationSchönefeld, Brandenburg
Elevation AMSL154 ft / 48 m
Coordinates52°22′43″N 013°31′14″E / 52.37861°N 13.52056°E / 52.37861; 13.52056
Websitewww.berlin-airport.de
Map
Runways
Direction Length Surface
m ft
07L/25R 2,710 8,891 Asphalt
07R/25L 3,000 9,843 Concrete
Source: German AIP at EUROCONTROL

Berlin-Schönefeld International Airport (Flughafen Berlin-Schönefeldⓘ) (IATA: SXF, ICAO: EDDB) is an international airport located in the town of Schönefeld in Brandenburg, adjacent to Berlin's southern border. It is referred to as "The Holiday Airport", as it has mostly international charter flights. Schönefeld was once the major civil airport of East Germany (and only airport serving East Berlin).

It lies outside the city, unlike the other two Berlin airports, Berlin-Tegel International Airport and Tempelhof International Airport and the problem of noise pollution is not so much of an issue.

Schönefeld will be transformed into Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport in 2011. Once the expansion of the new terminal starts construction, Tempelhof airport will close (originally planned for 30 October 2004 but now likely to be October 2008). Six months after the airport is renamed and the new section opened, Tegel airport will then close.

The airport is served by the Berlin-Schönefeld Flughafen railway station. This station is the terminus of lines S9 and S45 of the Berlin S-Bahn, with trains running to/from Berlin city centre, and is also served by mainline railways.

In 2006, it served 6,059,343 passengers.

History

Berlin-Schönefeld airport was founded on 15 October 1934, with the construction of the Henschel aircraft plant (MLG) in Schönefeld. Up until the end of the Second World War over 14,000 airplanes were built there. On 22 April 1945 MLG was occupied by Soviet troops. The equipment for the aircraft construction was either dismantled or blown up. Later, up until 1947, railways were repaired and agricultural machinery was built and repaired on the site. In 1946 Soviet air forces moved from Johannisthal to Schönefeld, and Aeroflot started operating from the airport. In 1947 the Soviet military administration of Germany approved the construction of a civilian airport at the site in SMAD (instruction NR. 93).

Following World War II, Tempelhof was used as a U.S. Air Force base, while the Soviet air force relocated to Schönefeld during 1946. Tempelhof was returned to civil administration in 1951, Schönefeld in 1954 and Tegel in 1960. Tegel and Schönefeld served the civilian populations of West Berlin and East Berlin, respectively.

Between 1947 and 1990 Schönefeld airport was renamed several times and became the central airport of the GDR. Aeroflot Tu-144 aircraft began operating from the airport in the 1970s. A stipulation of the Four Powers Agreements on the status of Berlin following World War II was a ban on air traffic by German air carriers to Berlin - only American, British, French or Soviet airlines could fly to the city. But because of Berlin-Schönefeld's location outside of the city boundaries of Berlin, this restriction did not apply. Thus, German aircraft (usually of the GDR airline Interflug, formerly German Lufthansa of the GDR) could take off and land from Schönefeld, which was not the case at Tegel and Tempelhof airports. With the reunification of Germany and Berlin, Tegel and Tempelhof could once again receive flights by German airlines, such as Lufthansa, as well.

Following German reunification in 1990, the efficacy of operating three separate airports became increasingly prohibitive, leading the Berlin City Council to pursue a single airport that would be more efficient and would decrease the noise pollution especially from the two centrally located airports within the city. In addition, the cumulative capacity of Berlin's three airports was 15.5 million in late 2003, a measure that would only be needed after 2010, according to current prognoses. Both Tempelhof and Tegel are surrounded by urban development and cannot expand. A single new airport would increase the capacity to at least 20 million initially, which would be expanded to 30 million before 2030. This would enable Berlin to accommodate a number of flights similar in magnitude to that of airports serving other European capitals, like London's Heathrow or Paris' Charles De Gaulle.

The conversion to the Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport is scheduled for completion in 2011. After a 10-year administrative court battle, on 16 March, 2006 the federal administrative court in Leipzig gave the go-ahead for the project by ruling in favour of Berlin against challenges by residents and municipalities near the future airport. Schönefeld is located in Brandenburg, the Bundesland (federal state) surrounding Berlin; the name reflects that the airport will serve both.

Berlin-Brandenburg International (BBI) will replace the three airports currently serving Berlin. Schönefeld will be greatly expanded from its current state to allow this, although flights between midnight and 5 am will remain banned. Tegel Airport is tentatively scheduled to close in 2011. Tempelhof Airport was originally scheduled to close on 31 October, 2004, but after reevaluation, this decision was subsequently postponed until October 2008.

The IATA Airport Identifier Code BBI is currently used for the Biju Patnaik Airport in Bhubaneswar, India. Whether the new airport will use the SXF code for Berlin's Metropolitan Area, BER, or the BBI code is undecided. Frankfurt International Airport accommodates about over 50 million passengers annually (2005: 52.2 Mio). Munich International Airport is the country's second busiest airport, having served 28.6 Million passengers in 2005. Berlin hopes to claim at least third place with the new BBI Airport.

Accidents

On 12 December 1986, an Aeroflot Tu-134 crashed on its approach towards the airport, killing 72 of the 82 passengers and crew on board. On 16 July 1989, an Ilyushin IL-62 from Interflug-Airlines crashed after take off into a field near Berlin, 21 people died.

Airlines and destinations

Berlin-Schönefeld International Airport

Schönefeld International Airport has four terminals: A, B, C and D. Most airlines arrive and depart from Terminal A, except for easyJet (Terminal B), Condor, Germanwings, SunExpress (Terminal D) and all Israeli airlines (Terminal C). All terminals are connected.

Terminal A

Terminal B

  • easyJet (Athens, Barcelona, Basel/Mulhouse, Belfast-International, Bristol, Brussels [starts October 29, 2007], Budapest, Copenhagen, Geneva, Glasgow-International, Lisbon, Liverpool, London-Gatwick, London-Luton, Lyon [starts October 29, 2007], Madrid, Málaga, Milan-Malpensa, Naples, Nice, Olbia, Palma de Mallorca, Paris-Orly, Pisa, Riga, Rome-Ciampino, Tallinn, Venice)

Terminal C

Terminal D

  • Condor (Antalya, Bourgas, Dalaman, Heraklion, Palma de Mallorca, Tenerife-South)
  • Germanwings (Burgas, Cologne/Bonn, Düsseldorf, Ibiza, Istanbul-Sabiha Gökçen, Izmir, Moscow-Vnukovo, Munich, Mykonos, Saint Petersburg, Split, Stockholm-Arlanda, Stuttgart, Varna, Zagreb, Zweibrücken)
  • SunExpress (Antalya, Bodrum, Izmir)
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