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Terminal 1 at Berlin-Brandenburg Airport: »Certain evidence of subsidy fraud«
Photo: Patrick Pleul / dpa
Recently, Berlin's airport manager Engelbert Lütke Daldrup has been enjoying himself as a skeptic.
While many of his colleagues are cautiously optimistic about air traffic, Lütke Daldrup is dampening hopes of an early recovery from the pandemic shock.
"2021 will be a tough year for the industry," he said shortly after the BER opened in a small group.
"If we can handle 30 percent of the passenger volume prior to Corona, we can be satisfied."
In November, Terminal 1 showed a sad picture.
Passengers were in short supply; that month there were just ten percent of those who had flown to and from Tegel and Schönefeld a year earlier.
The few travelers lost themselves in the vastness of the open architecture.
"Welcome to the airport cemetery," wrote the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung".
Without a pandemic, as the airport manager likes to say, things would look very different at the capital's airport.
Operations were in full swing, the airport company was gradually making money, would be creditworthy again and could take out loans even without government guarantees.
But then the virus destroyed everything.
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