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Orphaned terminal at BER: Hardly any passengers
Photo: Photo: Frank Sorge / imago images / Frank Sorge
Three terminals, two runways - and just 5000 passengers a day: At the capital's Willy Brandt Airport (BER), the number of passengers continued to decline in February due to the corona crisis.
The airport operators counted a total of 147,000 passengers - this corresponds to a decrease of 93 percent compared to the operation at the old airport in February 2020. The corona crisis caused passenger numbers to collapse worldwide, and there is no rapid improvement in sight.
BER managing director Engelbert Lütke Daldrup now sees politics as an obligation.
"The comprehensive quarantine regulations due to the Covid-19 pandemic meant that flight operations came to an almost complete standstill," he said.
An effective vaccination and testing strategy is now urgently needed.
The airport company now needs new money to compensate for the corona damage.
But financial experts like the auditor Karl-Heinz Wolf recently expressed doubts to the SPIEGEL about the airport's calculations.
"Everything that costs money is posted under a pandemic," said Wolf.
"Also the enormous legacy of the past that has nothing to do with the pandemic."
During the shutdown in spring, a group of accounting experts presented a study on the financial position of BER.
According to the calculations of the experts, the Berlin airport company remains a permanent subsidy case for taxpayers.
The pandemic is exacerbating the misery, but only accounts for 14 percent of it, according to the analysts.
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mic / hej / dpa
