Berlin Tegel: Farewell to the airport that
wouldn't die
Marcel Krueger, CNN • Updated 24th October 2020
Tegel Airport is scheduled to close for good on November 8, 2020.
JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images
Like so many other things in
the city, Tegel Airport is a stopgap measure that somehow became permanent.
After World War II, when West
Berlin was still in the hands of allied forces, there were plans to turn the
area into allotments, but Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had different plans.
As the blockade he ordered
began in June 1948, it turned out quickly that there was need for an additional
airfield to bring supplies in, so the French authorities in charge of the Tegel
district ordered the construction of a 2,500-meter-long runway -- the longest
in Europe at the time.
The first plane, a USAF
Douglas C-54, landed in November 1948.
After the blockade ended six
months later, Tegel became the Berlin base of the French Air Force.
In the late 1950s, with
increased air traffic coming into West Berlin in ever bigger planes, the
runways at Tempelhof were proving too short, so over the next two decades Tegel
became the main airport.
The city's special status
during the Cold War meant that only the Allies could operate military and
civilian aircraft from and to Tegel. All passengers had to use the airport's
original small prefabricated terminal building.
Despite these cramped
conditions and restrictions, for some the airport truly was a gateway to
freedom.
Drahomira Bukowiecki fled
communist Czechoslovakia in 1968 to West Berlin and was sentenced to 10 years
hard labor in absentia.
For her, the airport became
the only means of escaping a city surrounded by communism.
"I could only ever leave through Tegel, as I would have been arrested if I tried to cross the GDR via land," Bukowiecki tells CNN Travel. "So Tegel truly became my gateway to the world, also because I took a plane for the first time in my life from here."
Hexagonal glamor
Tegel was seen as a "a gateway to freedom" for some
people fleeing Soviet oppression.
Maja Hitij/Getty Images
The airport continued to make
an impression on Berliners, especially after a new, mildly brutalist and
hexagonally shaped terminal building was opened in 1974.
The striking design shortened
walking distances to as short as 30 meters from aircraft to the terminal exit.
"To me and many other
West Berliners, Tegel really was a place apart," Bukowiecki adds. "It
symbolized the glamorous world of air travel with its shops that sold wonderful
things and the whole process of taking a flight which was very different in the
1970s.
"And even after
reunification, with air travel becoming available widely, that view did not
change. Schönefeld really is so far away from the city center. So for me and my
generation Tegel is the true Berlin airport, a part of us and the one place
that enabled us to fly to freedom!"
In the next few years things
really took off for Tegel.
On September 1, 1975, Pan Am
and British Airways moved their entire Berlin operation here overnight.
Retired journalist Jutta
Hertlein remembers the excitement of her neighbors when the new terminal
started its operations.
"In the morning my
neighbor came to me and asked if I had heard all the planes flying low over the
house all night -- they were moving them from Tempelhof to Tegel," she
says. "But I had been so immersed in my work that I did not hear a thing."
Hertlein also recalls that
Tegel occupied a significant place in the political landscape of Berlin and
Germany, for better or worse.
"I used it often to
travel for work; but at the same time in the '80s the airport was already used
for the deportation of asylum seekers.
"There was a large protest planned on one such occasion, and I went to join the protestors at Tegel in the morning, but as I was wearing my usual business attire the policemen cordoning off the protest tried to guide me to the airport as I did not look like a protester at all -- but I wanted to show that it's not just the young punks and leftists protesting these deportations."
Confusion and chaos
Tegel was scheduled to close early because of the pandemic, but
still came back for more.
JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images
With German reunification in
1990 and the government moving from Bonn to Berlin, all restrictions on Berlin
air traffic were lifted and Tegel became the official German government airport.
That role has meant it's seen
the US President's Air Force One landing here more often than any other airport
in Germany.
Reunification also meant that
passenger numbers and flights increased exponentially as air travel became more
and more commonplace.
Tegel was designed for
handling 2.5 million passengers a year, but 24 million people flew from here in
2019.
While a new third terminal
was added in 2007, Tegel became increasingly cramped, with operations and
facilities clearly outdated.
There was no direct public
transport connection either. Travelers using Berlin's U-Bahn metro system had
to change to a bus at Kurt-Schumacher-Platz. Even Schönefeld had better rail
connections.
"Tegel's unique architecture
and design make you feel like being time-warped into the 1970s," says
frequent traveler Michael Stoffl, from Berlin. "The airport is tiny,
especially when compared to other major capitals around the globe.
"The airport may have
been considered modern and appropriate when it was opened but, especially over
the last decade, passengers were to experience its downsides, like often
feeling crammed and chaotic -- and definitely the lack of space.
"You had to make sure
you didn't line up in the wrong queue at the check-in counters as it was often
confusing where each one led to.
"Many Tegel regulars
rave about its proximity to the city center, which makes for a quick transfer
into town -- unless you were using public transport. Personally, I won't be
missing Tegel, except perhaps from a nostalgic aspect."
“ I'm madly in love with its '70s ugliness. ”
Tilman Hierath, managing partner of Berlin's
Circus Hotel
But Tegel's car-friendly
design endeared the airport to many, especially in the Berlin hospitality
sector.
Tilman Hierath is the
managing partner of the Circus Hotel on Rosenthaler Platz as well as an
enthusiastic hobby pilot and loves to use the airport.
"Tegel is easily the
best airport in the world," he says. "And I don't only say that
because I'm madly in love with its '70s ugliness.
"This design might not
be efficient to operate, but it is a traveler's dream of short waiting times
and short distances. When the cab drivers went on strike a few years back, I
rented a van and drove our guests from the hotel to the airport.
"In Tegel that does not mean to an entrance two counties away. Instead, we were able to drop our guests off directly at their gate. It is the only major airport I know where you can see the check-in counter from the curb and the airplane from the check-in counter."
Shabby charm
An old Boeing 707 that was presented as a gift to Lufthansa sits
at the end of the runway.
aslu/ullstein bild/Getty Images
Hierath recalls a particular
incident involving a time-pressed guest.
"He needed to be in a
very important meeting at our hotel and also needed to catch his flight that
afternoon. So our front desk actually called Tegel and they held the gate open
for our guest.
"It is this personal
touch that made all the difference. Tegel was not designed to intimidate and
impress, it was designed to be at the traveler's service."
Tegel has always seemed an
appropriate entrance to Berlin.
It's not a sleekly designed
airport strewn with massage seats and smart screens. Instead, like the city it
serves, it has a shabby charm and a good heart.
Its character shows through
in the quirky parts of the airport unrelated to flight operations.
At the end of the runway sits
an old Boeing 707, originally operated by El Al, that was once the target on an
attempt by Palestinian terrorists to hijack it in 1970.
It was decorated in vintage
Lufthansa markings and presented to the airline by Boeing as a gift in 1986. As
no German pilots or carriers were permitted to fly into Tegel at the time, the
plane was covered with white stickers and delivered by an American crew at
night, to be revealed in Lufthansa colors the next day.
The aircraft was presented by
Lufthansa to West Berlin in 1987 as part of celebrations for the city's 750th
birthday. Eventually it was shuffled off to a far-flung corner of the airfield,
occasionally being used for evacuation training.
At the other end of Tegel is the small but quirky Allierte in Berlin museum, a private collection operated by volunteers and dedicated to the history of the Allied forces in Berlin.
Bowie and Reagan
A gateway to Berlin for US Presidents and popstars, Tegel has
cemented its place in the city's history.
Maja Hitij/Getty Images
The airport itself is due to
be confined to history on November 8 when the final scheduled flight to leave
Tegel will be -- fittingly -- an Air France service to Paris.
After that, the future is
somewhat uncertain.
Real estate developers and
architects are ready to reinvent the airport: There are plans to develop the
site into a so-called "Urban Tech Republic," a high tech business hub
that could provide 18,000 jobs.
Tegel's A and B terminals
will be used by the University of Applied Sciences Berlin to establish a new
technology park for up to 2,500 students. The remaining area will be available
for industrial use, the largest single inner-city development area in
contemporary Berlin.
Whatever its fate, the
airport's place in the story of Berlin will forever cement its status as
"the" city airport, particularly, as British writer and Berlin expert
Paul Sullivan points out, thanks to its role in recent pop culture.
"I think that over the
decades the airport's modest dimensions and aesthetic and the fact that many
celebrities like David Bowie and Ronald Reagan used it to enter West Berlin
really created a lot of affection in Berliners," he says.
"Even the overpriced
Currywurst stall outside the terminal, made to look like an S-Bahn carriage, to
me symbolizes the airport's charming crappiness."
Even though the neighbors
will be relieved, the one thing that I'll miss about Tegel the most is the
direct, loud and smelly experience of travel.
There was something genuinely
appealing about waiting at the bus stop on Kurt-Schumacher-Platz near the kebab
stands and Chinese restaurants and watching the planes roar in just 50 meters
overhead on their final approach to the airport.
Tegel was one of the last of
a dying breed: a veteran city airport, battered and forever unbeaten.
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