Berlin Schönefeld Airport

Berlin Schönefeld Airport Flughafen Berlin-Schönefeld
IATA: SXF – ICAO: EDDB, ETBS
Summary
Airport type	Public
Operator	Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH
Serves	Berlin, Germany
Location	Schönefeld
Focus city for	Condor easyJet
Elevation AMSL	157 ft / 48 m
Coordinates	52°22′43″N 013°31′14″E / 52.37861°N 13.52056°E / 52.37861; 13.52056Coordinates: 52°22′43″N 013°31′14″E / 52.37861°N 13.52056°E / 52.37861; 13.52056
Website	berlin-airport.de
Map
SXF Location relative to Berlin
Runways
Direction Length Surface m ft 07L/25R 3,600 11,881 Asphalt
Statistics (2012)
Passengers 7,097,274[1]
Sources: German AIP at EUROCONTROL[2]

Berlin Schönefeld Airport ( Flughafen Berlin Schönefeld ) (IATA: SXF, ICAO: EDDB) is an international airport located directly at the southern border of Berlin, the capital of Germany, and 18 km (11 mi) southeast^[2] of its city centre near the town of Schönefeld. It is the smaller of the two airports in Berlin after Berlin Tegel Airport and serves as a base for Condor and easyJet.

Schönefeld was the major civil airport of East Germany (GDR), and the only airport serving East Berlin. It will be merged into Berlin Brandenburg Airport when it opens in 2017 or later.^[3]

History

First years and World War II

Schönefeld airport was opened on 15 October 1934 to accommodate the Henschel aircraft plant. By the end of the Second World War, over 14,000 aircraft had been built. On 22 April 1945, the airport was occupied by Soviet troops, and the aircraft construction facilities were either dismantled or blown up. By late 1947, the airport rail link had been repaired and agricultural machinery was built and repaired on the site. In 1946, the Soviet Air Forces moved from Johannisthal Air Field to Schönefeld, including the civil airline Aeroflot. In 1947, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany approved the construction of a civilian airport at the site.

Between 1947 and 1990, Schönefeld airport was renamed on several occasions and finally became the main airport of the DDR (Zentralflughafen).

A stipulation of the Four Power Agreement following World War II was a total ban on German carriers' participation in air transport to Berlin, where access was restricted to US, British, French and Soviet airlines. Since Schönefeld airport was located outside of the city boundaries of Berlin, this restriction did not apply. Thus, aircraft of the East German flag carrier Interflug could use Schönefeld airport, while West German Lufthansa was denied access to Tegel or Tempelhof airports.

Development after the German reunification

Berlin Schönefeld Airport saw a major increase in passenger numbers over the recent years, which was caused by the opening of bases for both easyJet and Germanwings. In 2008, the airport served 6.6 million passengers.

Following German reunification in 1990, operating three separate airports became increasingly cost prohibitive, leading the Berlin legislature to pursue a single airport that would be more efficient and would decrease the amount of aircraft noise from the airport within the city. Therefore, it was decided to erect Berlin Brandenburg Airport at the current site of Schönefeld Airport, originally scheduled to open in autumn 2012. For various reasons, mainly issues with the fire alarm/safety system, the opening has been postponed to 2016 or later.

The new airport will share only one runway with the existing one – the current runway will become the north runway of the new airport. Most of the old Schönefeld Airport, including the terminal and apron areas, will undergo complete urban redevelopment following its closure. Part of the old apron area will be used by the future new passenger terminal of the German government used for state visits and other state flight operations.^[4]

At the start of the winter season in 2012 Germanwings left Schönefeld for Berlin-Tegel to maintain closer operations within the Lufthansa Group there.^[5] However, to provide competition for Ryanair's new routes, Germanwings announced to return to Schönefeld in addition to their Tegel operations from October 2015.^[6]

Aer Lingus also announced to switch airports within Berlin, from Schönefeld to Tegel, by March 2015.^[7] Meanwhile, Ryanair announced to establish their sixth German base in Schönefeld by 27 October 2015 by deploying five aircraft to the airport and adding 16 new routes.^[8]

Terminals

Schönefeld Airport consists of the four terminals A, B, C and D^[9] for check-in. Terminals A, B and D are connected through their jointly used airside concourse. Due to a lack of space there are not as many facilities as at many other airports but there are some shops and restaurants as well as a branch of Burger King and airline lounges.

Terminals A and B

The main building is the original part of the airport. It houses check-in for Terminals A and B. Terminal A features check-in counters A01–A18, with the largest user being Ryanair besides several other airlines like Aeroflot. Terminal B, in a side wing, was originally reserved for transit passengers to and from West Berlin, who took advantage of cheaper air fares and package tours arranged by an East German travel agency. Nowadays, it is used exclusively by EasyJet with the check-in counters B20–B29. The airside consists of three jet bridges as well as several walk-boarding aircraft stands located at Pier 3a, an extension that was opened in 2005.

Terminal C

Terminal C was originally built to accommodate flights to Israel. It was reconfigured in 2008 and now handles sightseeing trips and flights in connection with special events.^[10] It has no direct connection to Terminals A, B and D and does not handle scheduled services.

Terminal D

Terminal D was opened in December 2005 due to rapidly growing passenger numbers. Being nearly identical to Terminal C at Berlin Tegel Airport, it features check-in counters D40–D57, which are mainly used by Condor and Norwegian Air Shuttle. It does not feature jet bridges but several walk-boarding stands.

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights at Berlin Schönefeld Airport:^[11]

Airlines	Destinations	Check-in
Aer Lingus	Dublin (ends 24 October 2015)[12]	A
Aeroflot	Moscow-Sheremetyevo	A
Aeroflot operated by Rossiya	Saint Petersburg	A
Air Algérie	Seasonal: Algiers	A
Air VIA	Seasonal charter: Burgas, Varna	D
Belavia	Minsk-National	A
Bulgarian Air Charter	Seasonal charter: Burgas, Varna	D
Condor	Antalya, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Hurghada, Lanzarote, Larnaca, Tenerife-South Seasonal: Corfu, Dalaman, Heraklion, Jerez, Kos, Palma de Mallorca, Rhodes	D
easyJet	Agadir, Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Basel/Mulhouse, Bristol, Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Geneva, Glasgow-International, Larnaca, Lisbon, Liverpool, London-Gatwick, London-Luton, London-Southend, Lyon, Madrid, Málaga, Manchester, Marrakech, Milan-Malpensa, Naples, Nice, Palma de Mallorca, Paris-Orly, Pisa, Rome-Fiumicino, Salzburg, Tel Aviv-Ben Gurion, Tenerife-South, Thessaloniki, Venice-Marco Polo Seasonal: Cagliari, Corfu, Dubrovnik, Faro, Heraklion, Olbia, Rhodes, Split	A, B
EgyptAir	Cairo	A
Freebird Airlines	Charter: Antalya	A
Germania	Antalya, Beirut, Tehran-Imam Khomeini[13] Seasonal: Djerba (begins 5 May 2015),[14] Enfidha, Gran Canaria, Hurghada, Ibiza (begins 4 May 2015),[14] Lanzarote, Paphos, Tenerife-South	D
Germanwings	Cologne/Bonn (begins 5 October 2015),[6] Stuttgart (begins 25 October 2015)[6]	D
Norwegian Air Shuttle	Barcelona, Bergen, Copenhagen, London-Gatwick, Oslo-Gardermoen, Stockholm-Arlanda, Tenerife-South, Trondheim Seasonal: Stavanger	D
Pegasus Airlines	Istanbul-Sabiha Gökçen Seasonal: Antalya	A
Ryanair	Alicante (begins 28 October 2015), Athens (begins 25 October 2015), Barcelona (begins 27 October 2015), Bari (begins 28 October 2015), Bratislava (begins 27 October 2015), Bergamo, Bologna (begins 27 October 2015), Brussels (begins 27 October 2015), Cologne/Bonn (begins 27 October 2015), Dublin, East Midlands, Glasgow-International (begins 31 October 2015),[15] London-Stansted, Madrid,[16] Málaga (begins 31 October 2015), Palermo,[17] Palma de Mallorca (begins 27 October 2015), Porto, Riga (begins 27 October 2015), Rome-Ciampino (begins 27 October 2015), Shannon, Treviso (begins 27 October 2015), Valencia (begins 27 October 2015)	A
TAP Portugal	Lisbon	A
Tunisair	Djerba, Enfidha	A
UP operated by El Al	Tel Aviv-Ben Gurion	D
WOW air	Reykjavík-Keflavík	D

Cargo

Airlines	Destinations
FedEx Feeder operated by Air Contractors	Gdańsk, Paris-Charles de Gaulle
West Air Sweden	Cologne/Bonn

Other facilities

The head office of Private Wings is located in the General Aviation Terminal (Allgemeine Luftfahrt) on the property of Schönefeld Airport.^[18][19][20] Before its demise, the East German airline company Interflug had its headquarters on the airport property.^[21][22]

Statistics

	Passengers
2000	2,209,444
2001	1,915,110
2002	1,688,028
2003	1,750,921
2004	3,382,106
2005	5,075,172
2006	6,059,343
2007	6,331,191
2008	6,638,162
2009	6,797,158
2010	7,297,911
2011	7,113,989
2012	7,097,274
2013	6,727,306
Source: ADV[23]

Ground transportation

Train

Berlin Schönefeld Airport is served by Berlin Schönefeld Flughafen railway station, a short walking distance away from the airport terminal. Berlin S-Bahn lines S9 and S45 each run every twenty minutes. The Regional-Express (RE) AirportExpress train is the only direct link to the city centre of Berlin. It runs every 30 minutes, and stops at the most important stations of Berlin, including Berlin Ostbahnhof, Alexanderplatz, Friedrichstrasse, Central Station (after 30 minutes), and Zoologischer Garten railway station.

Car

The airport can be reached via the nearby motorway A113 (Exit Schönefeld Süd) which itself is connected to motorways A100 which leads to Berlin city center and A110 which circles around Berlin and connects further to all directions.

Bus

The airport is linked by local BVG bus lines 162 (towards Adlershof) and 171 (towards Neukölln). Additionally the X7 bus service provides a connection to the Berlin U-Bahn network at Rudow Station^[24] At night, the underground replacement bus N7 is available.

Accidents and incidents

German Democratic Republic era

• On 14 August 1972, an Ilyushin Il-62 aircraft of Interflug (registered DM-SEA) crashed near Königs Wusterhausen shortly into a flight to Burgas, killing all 156 passenger and crew on board.

• On 22 November 1977, a Tupolev Tu-134 aircraft of Interflug (registration DM-SCM) crashed upon landing at Schönefeld Airport due to a falsely configured autopilot. There were no fatalities among the 74 passenger and crew, but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.^[25]

• On 19 August 1978, LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165, a LOT flight from Gdansk Airport to Schönefeld (carried out on a Tupolev Tu-134, registration SP-LGC),was hijacked and forced to land at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin, thus having been used as a means for escaping the Eastern Bloc. In these cases, perpetrators were usually not charged by Western authorities.^[26]

• On 12 December 1986, an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134 (registration CCCP-65795) coming from Minsk Airport crashed in Berlin Bohnsdorf on its approach towards Schönefeld airport, after having attempted to land on a runway that was temporary blocked for construction work, killing 72 of the 82 passengers and crew on board.^[27]

• On 17 June 1989, an Ilyushin Il-62 aircraft of Interflug (registration DDR-SEW) bound for Moscow crashed shortly after take-off into a field near the airport and caught fire. 21 people on board as well as one person on the ground were killed. The East German authorities feared an act of sabotage due to the anniversary of the East German uprising, which led to a delayed aid for injured people. West German rescuers offering help were denied access to the scene. The cause for the accident was later given as a jammed rudder due to a manufacturing defect.^[28]

Federal Republic of Germany era

• On 28 March 2000, a Boeing 737-300 of Germania (registration D-AGES) operating a charter flight on behalf of LTU from Tenerife South Airport to Schönefeld was the subject of an attempted hijack in mid-flight. A passenger forced his way into the cockpit, where he attacked the pilot, leading to a sudden loss of altitude. The perpetrator was restrained and the flight continued to Berlin.^[29]

• On 19 June 2010, a 1944-built, historic Douglas DC-3 D-CXXX of Berlin Air Services crashed shortly after take off on a local sightseeing flight, causing 7 injuries but no fatalities.^[30]

See also

• Transport in Germany
• List of airports in Germany
• Berlin Brandenburg Airport

References

External links

Media related to Berlin Schönefeld Airport at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• Current weather for EDDB at NOAA/NWS
• Accident history for SXF at Aviation Safety Network

Airports in Germany Major international Berlin Brandenburg (under construction) Berlin–Schönefeld Berlin–Tegel Cologne/Bonn Düsseldorf Frankfurt Hamburg Hannover Munich Stuttgart Minor international Bremen Dortmund Dresden Erfurt/Weimar Frankfurt–Hahn Friedrichshafen Heringsdorf Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Kassel Leipzig/Halle Lübeck Memmingen Münster/Osnabrück Nuremberg Paderborn/Lippstadt Rostock Saarbrücken Sylt Weeze Domestic Borkum Bremerhaven Emden Harle Heide–Büsum Heligoland Juist Mannheim Norddeich Wangerooge Unscheduled Augsburg Bayreuth Bitburg Black Forest Braunschweig–Wolfsburg Hamburg–Finkenwerder Hof–Plauen Ingolstadt/Manching Kiel Leipzig–Altenburg Magdeburg–Cochstedt Merzbrück Mönchengladbach Neubrandenburg Rechlin–Lärz Siegerland Stralsund–Barth Zweibrücken