Oh, yes: BER opened
In old school textbooks, one can still look up the dates of the passing of resolutions, the start of planning and the ground-breaking ceremony. According to these documents, it was in the last millennium when books were used instead of apps and concepts such as information were separated from belief and planning specifications from funding claims, and the word fakenews was an Anglicised oximoron and not giant gnomes and social distance determined everyday life.
But all the missed deadlines and promises are forgotten when one now sees for what an imposing yet at the same time modest flagship of the capital of the Republic Tegel and Tempelhof have been closed and converted into a rubbish dump/leisure and recreation area.
By the way: the oldest German airport was Berlin-Johannisthal. In the early years, air shows were held on the site with its covered grandstand from 1909 and postal aircraft operated regularly in 1919, but this was forgotten when Tempelhof opened in 1923. Today, however, almost as many aircraft take off and land at BBI - oh excuse me, of course BER - as in the best days of the original Schönefeld west of Köpenick.
When in 1991, shortly after the first climate package, a fourth paraffin fuelling station for environmentally friendly means of transport and the implementation security ('no matter what it costs ...') for Berlin were also decided as a logical consequence, no one had yet in mind that omission marks would be appended in brackets ('or how long it takes'). The fact that the accession of the Soviet occupation zone to the airlift site and the handover of the old airport run by the US liberation forces would have to take place before the groundbreaking ceremony was not a neuralgic factor at the time that could have led to delays.
To hedge their bets, referendums were held, whereupon laws were passed to close Tempelhof, which was supposed to be an exhibition hall from the start and was only spontaneously provided with a runway because Schönefeld was reaching its capacity limits - that's how democracy worked back then. The Basic Law is much easier to overturn than an airport in Berlin.
Silver wedding
At the latest after the 25th postponement (2017, 25 years after the start of planning in 1992) and the likewise 25-fold overrun of the announced costs, someone could have asked whether the old airports could not be kept, but it is like bulky waste that has been put on the street: as soon as it is decided, it would be theft, and that is a taboo even for diplomatically immune politicians. After all, according to the latest senate decisions, the A10, A117 and B96a are also to be connected as terminals 6,7 and 9 for cost-saving reasons by means of converted toll booths.
The question of terminals 4 and 8
Whether operations will settle down and whether the reactivation of Schoenefeld Airfield, which had already been closed in the 1970s and is far from the city centre, will be necessary, will be shown by the development of passenger numbers over the next 29 years, i.e. the same period between the decision to build and the opening. According to an editorial poll, the most likely outcome will be a referendum to build a tunnel between BER and SXF, since the traffic concept after the ban on internal combustion engines will suggest that all passenger traffic must be underground so that people do not breathe the polluted air and get used to seeing no more daylight. Dreams of the future? Not at all, would anyone have thought at the beginning of the 1990s that by 2020 we would no longer be driving cars, but only flying?