Berlin-Tegel International Airport
Encyclopedia
Berlin Tegel "Otto Lilienthal
" Airport is the main international airport in Berlin
, Germany
. It lies in Tegel
, a section of the northern borough of Reinickendorf
, 8 km (5 mi) northwest of the city centre of Berlin. Tegel Airport is notable for its hexagonal terminal building around an open square, which makes for walking distances as short as 30 m (98.4 ft) from the aircraft to the terminal exit. In 2010, the airport served just over 15 million passengers, making it by far the biggest airport serving Berlin and the fourth busiest airport in Germany. The airport is scheduled to close by 3 June 2012, the day the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport is set to become operational.
Tegel Airport is a hub
for Air Berlin
, and serves as focus city
for Lufthansa
. Additionally, it is the most important base for the charter business of Germania
. The two dominant operators, Air Berlin and Lufthansa, each handle around 30% of the scheduled commercial flights.
n nobility. During the 19th century, it was used as an artillery
firing range
. Aviation history
dates back to the early 20th century, when the Prussian airship
battalion
was based there and the area became known as Luftschiffhafen Reinickendorf. In 1906, a hangar
was built for testing of Groß-Basenach and Parseval type airships.
Soon after the outbreak of World War I
, on 20 August 1914, the area was dedicated to military training of aerial reconnaissance
crews. Following the war
, all aviation industry was removed as a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles
, which prohibited Germany from having any armed aircraft. On 27 September 1930, Rudolf Nebel
launched an experimental rocket
testing and research facility on the site. It became known as Raketenschießplatz Tegel and attracted a small group of eminent aerospace engineer
s, which included German
-American
rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun
. In 1937, the rocket pioneers left Tegel in favour of the secret Peenemünde
army research centre.
During World War II
, the area served once again as a military training area, mostly for Flak
troops. It was destroyed in Allied air raids.
were shelved due to the Berlin Blockade
, which began on 24 June 1948. In the ensuing US
-led Berlin Airlift
, it quickly turned out that Berlin's existing main airport at Tempelhof was not big enough to accommodate all relief aircraft. As a consequence, the French military authorities in charge of Tegel at that time ordered the construction of a 2428 metres (7,965.9 ft) long runway, the longest in Europe
at the time, as well as provisional airport buildings and basic infrastructure. Groundbreaking took place on 5 August 1948, and only 90 days later, on 5 November, a United States Air Force
(USAF) Douglas C-54 Skymaster became the first aircraft to land at the new airport. The United States Air Forces in Europe
(USAFE) commander-in-chief
, General Cannon
, and the chief-of-staff
of the Anglo
-American airlift, General Tunner
, arrived at Tegel on this aircraft.
British
Dakota
and Hastings
aircraft carrying essential goods and raw materials began using Tegel on a regular basis from 17 November 1948. Regular cargo flights with American C-54s followed from 14 December 1948. Generally, the former carried food and fuel while the latter were loaded with coal. December 1948 also saw three Armée de l'Air
Junkers Ju 52/3m
transport planes participating in the airlift for the first time. However, the Armée de l'Air contributed to the overall airlift effort in a very small and symbolic way only. As a result of committing the small French
transport fleet to the growing war effort in Indochina
, as well as the joint Anglo-American decision to employ only four-engined planes for the remainder of the airlift to increase the number of flights and the amount of cargo carried on each flight by taking advantage of those aircraft's higher speeds and greater capacities, the French participation ceased.
and German reunification
resulted in the deactivation of the Western Allies
' armed forces in Berlin in July 1994. This in turn led to the decommissioning of base 165 the same year.)
In the late 1950s, the runways at West Berlin
's city centre Tempelhof Airport had become too short to accommodate the new-generation jet aircraft
such as the Aérospatiale Caravelle
, Boeing 707
, de Havilland Comet
except the 4B series, which could operate at Tempelhof without payload restrictions and Douglas DC-8
, without imposing payload or range
restrictions.
West Berlin's special legal status during the Cold War era (1945–1990) meant that all air traffic through the Allied air corridors
linking the exclave
with West Germany
was restricted to airlines headquartered in the United States
, the United Kingdom
or France
– the three Western victorious powers of World War II. In addition, all flightdeck crewpilots
, flight engineer
s and navigator
s flying aircraft into and out of West Berlin were required to hold American, British or French passports. During that period, the majority of Tegel's regular commercial flights served German domestic routes, hub airports
in Frankfurt
, London
, Paris and Amsterdam, points in the United States and popular holiday resorts in the Mediterranean
and Canary Islands
.
Initially, all commercial flights used the original terminal building (a pre-fabricated shed), which was situated to the North of the runway, at what is today the military part of the airport.
In 1988, Berlin Tegel was named after German aviation pioneer
Otto Lilienthal.
Air France
was the first airline to commence regular commercial operations at Tegel on 2 January 1960.
On that day, Air France, which had served Düsseldorf
, Frankfurt, Munich
and its main base at Paris Le Bourget
/Orly during the previous decade from Tempelhof with Douglas DC-4
, Sud-Est Languedoc and Lockheed Constellation
piston equipment, shifted its entire Berlin operation to Tegel because Tempelhof's runways were too short to permit the introduction of the Sud-Aviation Caravelle, the French flag carrier
's new short-haul jet
, with a viable payload. (Air France's Caravelle IIIs lacked thrust reverser
s that would have permitted them to land safely on Tempelhof's short runways with a full commercial payload.)
Following the mid- to late-1960s' introduction by Pan American World Airways
(Pan Am) and British European Airways
(BEA) of jet aircraft with short-field capabilities that were not payload-restricted on Tempelhof's short runways, Air France experienced a traffic decline on those routes where it competed with Pan Am and BEA, mainly as a result of Tegel's greater distance and poorer accessibility from West Berlin's city centre. Over this period, the French airline's market share halved from 9% to less than 5% despite having withdrawn from Tegel–Düsseldorf in summer 1964 and concentrated its limited resources on Tegel–Frankfurt and Tegel–Munich to maximise the competitive impact on the latter two routes. To reverse growing losses on its Berlin routes, Air France decided to withdraw from the internal German market entirely. This reduced its presence at Tegel to a single daily non-stop scheduled service from/to Paris Orly
only. In spring 1969, Air France entered into a joint venture with BEA. This arrangement entailed the latter taking over the former's two remaining German domestic routes to Frankfurt and Munich and operating these with its own aircraft and flightdeck crews from Tempelhof. The Air France-BEA joint venture terminated in autumn 1972.
On 1 November 1972, Air France introduced a second daily return flight between Orly and Tegel, which routed via Cologne
in both directions to maintain the airline's internal German traffic rights from/to Berlin.
From 1 April 1974, Air France routed both of its daily Orly–Tegel services via Cologne, and from 1 November 1974, it switched them to the French capital's then new Charles de Gaulle (CDG) Airport
.
At the start of the 1976 summer timetable, Air France introduced a third daily CDG
–Tegel frequency, which routed via Düsseldorf and utilised the Boeing 727
-200, a bigger aircraft than the Caravelles used on the company's other services from/to Berlin.
Air France subsequently routed all of its CDG–Tegel flights via Düsseldorf and standardised the aircraft equipment on the 727
-200/200 Advanced (Adv). 727-200/200 Adv continued to operate most of Air France's Berlin services until the end of the 1980s, when they were gradually replaced with state-of-the-art Airbus A320
s and more modern Boeing 737
s.
Pan Am followed Air France into Tegel in May 1964, with a year-round, thrice-weekly direct service to New York JFK
, which was operated with Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-8s. These aircraft could not operate from Tempelhof – the airline's West Berlin base at the time – with a viable payload. Launched with DC-8
equipment routing through Glasgow Prestwick in Scotland
, frequency subsequently increased to four flights a week, while the intermediate stop was cut out. Following the introduction of a daily Berlin Tempelhof–Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel
–London Heathrow
727 feeder flight that connected with the airline's transatlantic services
at the latter airport in April 1971, Pan Am withdrew its non-stop Tegel–JFK
service at the end of the summer timetable, in October of that year.
Following the cessation of direct Tegel–New York
scheduled services, Pan Am continued to operate affinity group/Advanced Booking Charter (ABC) flights from Tegel to the USA
on an ad hoc basis.
From the start of the 1974–75 winter season, Pan Am began operating a series of short- to medium-haul week-end charter flights from Tegel under contract to a leading West German
tour operator
. These flights served popular resorts in the Alpine
region and the Mediterranean. Following a major reduction in the airline's scheduled activities at Tempelhof as a result of co-ordinating its flight times with British Airways
(rather than operating competitive schedules), this helped increase utilisation of the 727s based at that airport, especially on weekends.
In addition to operating a limited number of commercial flights from Tegel prior to its move from Tempelhof on 1 September 1975, Pan Am used it as a diversion airfield
.
The move from Tempelhof to Tegel resulted in all of Pan Am's Berlin operations being concentrated at the latter.
1976 was the first year since 1972 the steady decline in scheduled domestic air traffic from and to West Berlin was arrested and reversed. The first expansion in Pan Am's Berlin operation since the move to Tegel occurred during that year's Easter festival period, when the airline temporarily stationed a Boeing 707-320B at the airport to cope with the seasonal rush on the prime Berlin–Frankfurt
route.
From late 1979, Pan Am began updating its Berlin fleet. This entailed phasing out all 727-100s by 1983. The first stage involved replacing two of the 13 German-based aircraft with a pair of stretched Boeing 727-200s originally destined for Ozark Air Lines
to add more capacity to Berlin–Frankfurt. This was followed by an order for eight additional 727-200s, with deliveries slated to begin in October 1981. After initially cancelling the order due to the airline's deteriorating finances and economic environment, it was subsequently reinstated, with deliveries due to commence in December 1981.
In the interim, a number of Boeing 737-200/200 Adv were leased from 1982.
The largest-ever expansion of Pan Am's scheduled internal German services occurred during summer 1984, when the airline's aircraft movements at Tegel increased by 20%. This coincided with the relocation of the US carrier's German and Central Europe
an headquarters from Frankfurt to Berlin on 1 May 1984.
Pan Am began introducing widebodied aircraft
on its Berlin routes in the mid-1980s. A pair of Airbus A300
s replaced 727-200s on Berlin–Frankfurt. The A300
s were subsequently replaced with Airbus A310
s. As these were −300 series aircraft that had sufficient range to cross the Atlantic
non-stop, this enabled reintroduction of non-stop, daily Tegel–JFK scheduled services from 1987.
Pan Am Express
, the regional commuter arm of Pan Am, began operating from Berlin Tegel in November 1987 with two Avions de Transport Régional (ATR) 42
commuter turboprop
s. It operated year-round scheduled services to secondary and tertiary destinations that could not be viably served with Pan Am's Tegel-based "mainline" fleet of Boeing 727-200s and Airbus A310s. These included Basle, Bremen
, Dortmund
, Hanover
, Innsbruck
, Kassel
, Kiel
, Milan, Salzburg
, Stockholm and Vienna
. In addition, Pan Am Express also helped Pan Am increase the number of flights on some of the other scheduled routes it used to serve from Berlin such as Tegel–Zürich
by operating additional off-peak frequencies.
British Airways was the last of West Berlin's three main scheduled carriers to commence regular operations from Tegel following the move from Tempelhof on 1 September 1975. However, like Pan Am, it and its predecessor BEA had used the airport as a diversion airfield before.
Initially, all British Airways services from Tegel – with the exception of the daily non-stop service to London Heathrow – continued to be operated by BAC One-Eleven
500s. The daily Heathrow
non-stop was operated with Hawker Siddeley Trident
2E/3B equipment based at that airport until the end of the 1975 summer season. (It subsequently reverted to a One-Eleven
500 operation.)
From 1983, British Airways began updating its Berlin fleet. This entailed phasing out the ageing One-Elevens, which were replaced with new Boeing 737–200 Adv.
During the second half of the 1980s, British Airways augmented its Berlin 737s with regional airliner
s. These initially comprised British Aerospace (BAe) 748s (from 1986) and subsequently BAe ATPs (from 1989). The introduction of these turboprops enabled the airline to serve shorter and thinner regional domestic routes from Berlin more economically. It also permitted a frequency increase, thereby enhancing competitiveness.
From 1966 until 1968, UK independent Lloyd International
was contracted by Neckermann und Reisen, the tour operator of West German mail-order concern Neckermann
, to launch a series of inclusive tour (IT) flights from Tegel. These flights were operated with Bristol Britannia
turboprops. They served principal Europe
an holiday resorts in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands.
From April 1968, all non-scheduled services, i.e. primarily the rapidly growing number of IT holiday flights that several UK independentindependent from government-owned corporation
s airlines as well as a number of US supplemental carriersUS non-scheduled airlines as classified by the United States Congress
in 1963 had mainly operated from Tempelhof since the early 1960s under contract to West Berlin's leading package tour operators, were concentrated at Tegel. This traffic redistribution between West Berlin's two commercial airports was intended to alleviate Tempelhof's increasing congestion and to make better use of Tegel, which was underutilised at the time.
During that period, the Allied
charter carriers had begun replacing their obsolete propliner
s with contemporary turboprop and jet aircraft types, which suffered payload and range restrictions on Tempelhof's short runways. The absence of such restrictions at Tegel gave airlines greater operational flexibility regarding aircraft types and destinations. This was the reason charter carriers favoured Tegel despite being less popular than Tempelhof because of its greater distance from West Berlin's city centre and poor public transport links.
A new passenger handling facility exclusively dedicated to charter airline passengers was opened to accommodate the additional traffic. Both this facility (a wooden shed) and the original terminal used by Air France's and Pan Am's scheduled passengers were located on the airport's north side.
Following the transfer of all charter traffic to Tegel, Channel Airways, Dan-Air Services, Laker Airways and Modern Air Transport began stationing several of their jets
at the airport.
Channel Airways's collapse in early 1972 provided the impetus for Dan-Air to take over the failed carrier's charter contracts and to expand its own operations at Tegel.
Dan-Air, one of Britain's foremost wholly private, independent airlines during the 1970s and 80s, eventually became the third-biggest operator at Tegel Airport, ahead of Air France. In addition to firmly establishing itself as the airport's and West Berlin's leading charter airline, it also operated scheduled services linking Tegel with Amsterdam Schiphol, Saarbrücken
and London Gatwick
, its main operating base. By the time that airline was taken over by British Airways at the end of October 1992, it had served Tegel Airport for a quarter of a century.
Modern Air's departure in October 1974 coincided with Aeroamerica's arrival. That carrier's departure following the end of the 1979 summer season was followed by Air Berlin USA's arrival.
Laker Airways's decision to replace its Tegel-based BAC One-Eleven fleet with one of its newly acquired Airbus A300 B4 widebodies
from the 1981 summer season resulted in Monarch Airlines taking over that airline's long-standing charter contract with Flug-Union Berlin, one of West Berlin's leading contemporary tour operator
s.
In the late 1980s, Monarch Airlines provided the aircraft as well as the flightdeck crew and maintenance support for Euroberlin France
, a Tegel-based scheduled airline headquartered in Paris, France. Euroberlin was jointly owned by Air France and Lufthansa, with the former holding a 51% majority stake, thereby making it a French legal entity
and enabling it to conduct commercial airline operations in West Berlin.
The following airlines operated regular services to/from Tegel Airport during the Cold War era as well:
In addition to the aforementioned airlines, a host of others – mainly British independents and US supplementals – were frequent visitors to Berlin Tegel, especially during the early 1970s. These included Britannia Airways
, British Airtours
, British United
, Caledonian
, Caledonian/BUA / British Caledonian
, Capitol International Airways
, Overseas National Airways
, Saturn Airways
, Trans International Airlines
, Transamerica Airlines and World Airways
. During that period, the airport scene at Berlin Tegel could be very colourful, with Air France Caravelles, the UK independents' BAC One-Elevens, de Havilland Comets and Hawker Siddeley Tridents as well as the US supplementals' Boeing 707s, Convair Coronados and Douglas DC-8s congregating on its ramp
. During 1974 alone, 22 airlines were operating at Tegel Airport.
A British Airways Lockheed L-1011 Tristar 1, a Laker Airways
McDonnell Douglas DC-10
-10, a Pan Am Boeing 747
-100 and an Air France Airbus A300 B2 were among the widebodied aircraft specially flown in for a pre-inauguration of the new terminal on 23 October 1974.
Dan-Air operated the first commercial flight to arrive at the airport's new terminal at 06.00 am local time with a BAC One-Eleven that was in-bound from Tenerife
.
on 3 October 1990, all access restrictions to the former West Berlin airports were lifted.
Lufthansa resumed flights to Berlin on 28 October 1990, initially operating twelve daily pairs of flights on a limited number of routes, including Tegel–Cologne, Tegel–Frankfurt and Tegel–London Gatwick. To facilitate the German flag carrier's resumption of services from/to Berlin, it purchased Pan Am's Internal German Services (IGS) division for US$150m
. This included Pan Am's internal German traffic rights as well as its gates and slots at Tegel. This agreement, under which Lufthansa contracted up to seven of Pan Am's Tegel-based Boeing 727-200s operated by that airline's flightdeck and cabin crews to ply its scheduled routes to Munich, Nuremberg
and Stuttgart until mid-1991, also facilitated Pan Am's orderly exit from the internal German air transport market after 40 years' uninterrupted service as European Union
(EU) legislation prevented it from participating in the internal air transport market of the EU/European Economic Area
(EEA) as a non-EU/EEA headquartered carrier. However, Pan Am continued operating its daily non-stop Tegel–JFK service until Delta Air Lines
assumed most of Pan Am's transatlantic scheduled services during 1991. Pan Am Express, which was not included in Pan Am's IGS sale to Lufthansa, continued operating all of its domestic and international regional scheduled routes from Tegel as an independent legal entity until its acquisition by TWA in 1991. Following TWA's takeover of Pan Am Express, the former Pan Am Express Berlin operations were closed. Until December 1994, Lufthansa also contracted Euroberlin to operate some of its internal German flights from its new Tegel base, making use of that airline's gates and slots at Tegel as well.
As a US-registered airline Air Berlin found itself in the same situation as Pan Am following German reunification. It chose to reconstitute itself as a German company.
These were the days when liberalisation of the EU/EEA internal air transport market was still in progress and when domestic traffic rights were reserved for each member country's own airlines. The German government therefore insisted that all non-German EU/EEA carriers either withdraw their internal German scheduled services from Berlin or transfer them to majority German-owned subsidiaries
by the end of 1992. It also wanted the bulk of all charter flights from Berlin to be operated by German airlines. These measures were squarely aimed at UK carriers with a major presence in the internal German air transport market from Berlin as well as the city's charter market, specifically British Airways and Dan-Air. Lufthansa and other German airlines reportedly lobbied their government to curtail British Airways's and Dan-Air's activities in Berlin, arguing that German airlines enjoyed no equivalent rights in the UK. This resulted in British Airways taking a 49% stake in Friedrichshafen
-based German regional airline Delta Air, renaming it Deutsche BA (DBA) and transferring its internal German traffic rights to the new airline. BA also replaced the commuter aircraft DBA had inherited from Delta Air with new Boeing 737-300s. These in turn replaced the Boeing 737–200 Adv and BAe ATP airliner
s British Airways had used on its internal German scheduled services from Berlin.
At the time of German reunification, Dan-Air's Berlin fleet numbered five aircraft, comprising three Boeing 737s (one −400, one −300 and one −200 Adv) and two HS 748s. The former were used to fly locally based holidaymakers from Tegel to overseas resorts on IT flights under contract to German package tour operators. The latter operated the airline's scheduled routes linking Tegel with Amsterdam and Saarbrücken. Dan-Air discontinued its charter operations from Berlin on behalf of German tour operators at the end of the 1990–91 winter season and replaced the ageing 748 turboprop it had used on its Amsterdam schedule since the mid-1980s with larger, more advanced BAe 146 100 series jet equipment. It also introduced new direct scheduled air links from Berlin to Manchester
and Newcastle via Amsterdam. The Saarbrücken route was withdrawn at the end of the 1991 summer season, while the Amsterdam route was gradually taken over by NLM Cityhopper
, the contemporary regional arm of Dutch flag carrier KLM. This reduced Dan-Air's presence in Berlin to a single daily scheduled service as well as up to four weekly charter flights linking the airline's Gatwick base with its former overseas base at Tegel. Flights were operated by Gatwick aircraft and crews until the firm's takeover by British Airways at the end of October 1992. The restructuring of Dan-Air's long-established Berlin operation was not only the result of political changes. It was also driven by its own corporate restructuring, which aimed to refocus the airline as a Gatwick-based short-haul "mainline" scheduled operator and involved phasing out its smaller aircraft and thinner routes.
Other airlines that commenced/resumed scheduled operations from Berlin Tegel at the beginning of the post-reunification era included Aero Lloyd
, Alitalia
, American Airlines
, Austrian Airlines
, SAS Eurolink, Swissair
, TWA and United Airlines
.
Aero Lloyd, Germania
and Condor Berlin began operating charter flights from Berlin Tegel during that period.
Amongst the former were the December 2005 launch of Tegel Airport's first-ever scheduled service to the Qatar
i capital Doha
by Qatar Airways
, operated non-stop at an initial frequency of four flights a week, and Air Berlin's November 2010 launch of non-stop, thrice-weekly Tegel–Dubai
flights (another first). This was followed by the latter's May 2011 launch of a non-stop, four-times-a-week Tegel–JFK service.
The latter began with BA's mid-2003 sale for a symbolic €1 (72p
) of its German subsidiary DBA to Intro Verwaltungsgesellschaft, a Nuremberg-based consultancy and investment company headed by German entrepreneur Hans Rudolf Wöhrl who founded German charter airline Eurowings
and also was a former DBA board member. Further consolidation among Tegel's German airlines took place when Air Berlin entered into an agreement to assume Germania's management shortly before the death of that airline's founder, took over DBA and gained control of LTU
. These events occurred in November 2005, August 2006 and March 2007, respectively.
Tegel airport consists of four terminals. As the airport is small compared to other major airports, these terminals might be regarded as "halls" or "boarding areas"; nevertheless, they are officially referred to as "terminals".
Tegel Airport was originally planned to have a second hexagonal terminal like the main building. The second terminal ring was never built because of Berlin municipal budgetary constraints and the post-reunification decision to replace the former West Berlin airports with the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
The following airlines offer scheduled flights to Berlin-Tegel Airport. Terminal assignments are valid for departing flights only.
Additionally, several airlines operate charter flights out of the airport, including:
bus lines, which offer connection to the U-Bahn
and S-Bahn
, as well as to Regional Express trains and long distance trains
:
Note: The Alt-Tegel U-Bahn station
and Tegel S-Bahn station do not serve Tegel Airport, but rather the Tegel quarter
of Berlin. An underground station directly serving the airport had been planned since the 1960s but was never built.
The following notable, non-fatal incidents involving airline operations occurred at Tegel. These include commercial flights that were about to depart or had actually departed/arrived as well as unscheduled stopovers:
There were also two Cold war era incidents relating to an American and a British airliner that had departed Tegel on international non-scheduled passenger services. Both of these occurred in Bulgaria
n airspace. The former was a charter flight carrying German holidaymakers to the Bulgarian Black Sea coast
, the latter a migrant charter en route to Turkey
:
In addition to these Cold War incidents involving commercial passenger flights that had originated at Berlin Tegel, there was another serious incident on a Tegel-bound non-scheduled passenger flight. This incident, which occurred during the same period over West Germany, involved a British holiday jet carrying German tourists from Austria
to West Berlin:
Otto Lilienthal
Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of human aviation who became known as the Glider King. He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful gliding flights. He followed an experimental approach established earlier by Sir George Cayley...
" Airport is the main international airport in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. It lies in Tegel
Tegel
Tegel is a locality in the Berlin borough of Reinickendorf on the shore of Lake Tegel. The Tegel locality, the second largest in area of the 95 Berlin districts, also includes the neighbourhood of Saatwinkel.-History:...
, a section of the northern borough of Reinickendorf
Reinickendorf
Reinickendorf is the twelfth borough of Berlin. It encompasses the northwest of the city area, including the Berlin-Tegel Airport, Lake Tegel, spacious settlements of detached houses as well as housing estates like Märkisches Viertel.-Subdivision:...
, 8 km (5 mi) northwest of the city centre of Berlin. Tegel Airport is notable for its hexagonal terminal building around an open square, which makes for walking distances as short as 30 m (98.4 ft) from the aircraft to the terminal exit. In 2010, the airport served just over 15 million passengers, making it by far the biggest airport serving Berlin and the fourth busiest airport in Germany. The airport is scheduled to close by 3 June 2012, the day the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport is set to become operational.
Tegel Airport is a hub
Airline hub
An airline hub is an airport that an airline uses as a transfer point to get passengers to their intended destination. It is part of a hub and spoke model, where travelers moving between airports not served by direct flights change planes en route to their destinations...
for Air Berlin
Air Berlin
Air Berlin PLC & Co. Luftverkehrs KG is Germany's second largest airline, after Lufthansa, and Europe's sixth largest airline in terms of passengers....
, and serves as focus city
Focus city
In the airline industry, a focus city is a location that is not a hub, but from which the airline has non-stop flights to several destinations other than its hubs...
for Lufthansa
Lufthansa
Deutsche Lufthansa AG is the flag carrier of Germany and the largest airline in Europe in terms of overall passengers carried. The name of the company is derived from Luft , and Hansa .The airline is the world's fourth-largest airline in terms of overall passengers carried, operating...
. Additionally, it is the most important base for the charter business of Germania
Germania (airline)
Germania Fluggesellschaft mbH, operating as Germania, is an airline with its headquarters in Berlin, Germany. It operates scheduled and chartered flights and aircraft lease services...
. The two dominant operators, Air Berlin and Lufthansa, each handle around 30% of the scheduled commercial flights.
The beginnings
The area of today's airport originally was part of Jungfernheide forest, which served as a hunting ground for the PrussiaPrussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n nobility. During the 19th century, it was used as an artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
firing range
Shooting range
A shooting range or firing range is a specialized facility designed for firearms practice. Each facility is typically overseen by one or more supervisory personnel, called variously a range master or "RSO – Range Safety Officer" in the United States or a range conducting officer or "RCO" in the UK...
. Aviation history
Aviation history
The history of aviation has extended over more than two thousand years from the earliest attempts in kites and gliders to powered heavier-than-air, supersonic and hypersonic flight.The first form of man-made flying objects were kites...
dates back to the early 20th century, when the Prussian airship
Airship
An airship or dirigible is a type of aerostat or "lighter-than-air aircraft" that can be steered and propelled through the air using rudders and propellers or other thrust mechanisms...
battalion
Battalion
A battalion is a military unit of around 300–1,200 soldiers usually consisting of between two and seven companies and typically commanded by either a Lieutenant Colonel or a Colonel...
was based there and the area became known as Luftschiffhafen Reinickendorf. In 1906, a hangar
Hangar
A hangar is a closed structure to hold aircraft or spacecraft in protective storage. Most hangars are built of metal, but other materials such as wood and concrete are also sometimes used...
was built for testing of Groß-Basenach and Parseval type airships.
Soon after the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, on 20 August 1914, the area was dedicated to military training of aerial reconnaissance
Aerial reconnaissance
Aerial reconnaissance is reconnaissance that is conducted using unmanned aerial vehicles or reconnaissance aircraft. Their roles are to collect imagery intelligence, signals intelligence and measurement and signature intelligence...
crews. Following the war
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, all aviation industry was removed as a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
, which prohibited Germany from having any armed aircraft. On 27 September 1930, Rudolf Nebel
Rudolf Nebel
Rudolf Nebel was a spaceflight advocate active in Germany's amateur rocket group, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt in the 1930s and in rebuilding German rocketry following World War II....
launched an experimental rocket
Rocket
A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...
testing and research facility on the site. It became known as Raketenschießplatz Tegel and attracted a small group of eminent aerospace engineer
Aerospace engineering
Aerospace engineering is the primary branch of engineering concerned with the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is divided into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering...
s, which included German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...
. In 1937, the rocket pioneers left Tegel in favour of the secret Peenemünde
Peenemünde
The Peenemünde Army Research Center was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the Army Weapons Office ....
army research centre.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the area served once again as a military training area, mostly for Flak
Anti-aircraft warfare
NATO defines air defence as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action." They include ground and air based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements and passive measures. It may be to protect naval, ground and air forces...
troops. It was destroyed in Allied air raids.
Berlin Airlift
Plans for converting the area into allotment gardensAllotment (gardening)
An allotment garden, often called simply an allotment, is a plot of land made available for individual, non-professional gardening. Such plots are formed by subdividing a piece of land into a few or up to several hundreds of land parcels that are assigned to individuals or families...
were shelved due to the Berlin Blockade
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied...
, which began on 24 June 1948. In the ensuing US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-led Berlin Airlift
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied...
, it quickly turned out that Berlin's existing main airport at Tempelhof was not big enough to accommodate all relief aircraft. As a consequence, the French military authorities in charge of Tegel at that time ordered the construction of a 2428 metres (7,965.9 ft) long runway, the longest in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
at the time, as well as provisional airport buildings and basic infrastructure. Groundbreaking took place on 5 August 1948, and only 90 days later, on 5 November, a United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
(USAF) Douglas C-54 Skymaster became the first aircraft to land at the new airport. The United States Air Forces in Europe
United States Air Forces in Europe
The United States Air Forces in Europe is the United States Air Force component of U.S. European Command, a Department of Defense unified command, and is one of two Air Force Major Commands outside of the continental United States, the other being the Pacific Air Forces...
(USAFE) commander-in-chief
Commander-in-Chief
A commander-in-chief is the commander of a nation's military forces or significant element of those forces. In the latter case, the force element may be defined as those forces within a particular region or those forces which are associated by function. As a practical term it refers to the military...
, General Cannon
John K. Cannon
General John Kenneth Cannon was a World War II Mediterranean combat commander and former chief of United States Air Forces in Europe for whom Cannon Air Force Base, Clovis, New Mexico, is named.-Biography:...
, and the chief-of-staff
Chief of Staff
The title, chief of staff, identifies the leader of a complex organization, institution, or body of persons and it also may identify a Principal Staff Officer , who is the coordinator of the supporting staff or a primary aide to an important individual, such as a president.In general, a chief of...
of the Anglo
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
-American airlift, General Tunner
William H. Tunner
William Henry Tunner was a general officer in the United States Air Force and its predecessor, the United States Army Air Forces...
, arrived at Tegel on this aircraft.
British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Dakota
Douglas DC-3
The Douglas DC-3 is an American fixed-wing propeller-driven aircraft whose speed and range revolutionized air transport in the 1930s and 1940s. Its lasting impact on the airline industry and World War II makes it one of the most significant transport aircraft ever made...
and Hastings
Handley Page Hastings
The Handley Page H.P.67 Hastings was a British troop-carrier and freight transport aircraft designed and built by Handley Page Aircraft Company for the Royal Air Force...
aircraft carrying essential goods and raw materials began using Tegel on a regular basis from 17 November 1948. Regular cargo flights with American C-54s followed from 14 December 1948. Generally, the former carried food and fuel while the latter were loaded with coal. December 1948 also saw three Armée de l'Air
French Air Force
The French Air Force , literally Army of the Air) is the air force of the French Armed Forces. It was formed in 1909 as the Service Aéronautique, a service arm of the French Army, then was made an independent military arm in 1933...
Junkers Ju 52/3m
Junkers Ju 52
The Junkers Ju 52 was a German transport aircraft manufactured from 1932 to 1945. It saw both civilian and military service during the 1930s and 1940s. In a civilian role, it flew with over 12 air carriers including Swissair and Deutsche Luft Hansa as an airliner and freight hauler...
transport planes participating in the airlift for the first time. However, the Armée de l'Air contributed to the overall airlift effort in a very small and symbolic way only. As a result of committing the small French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
transport fleet to the growing war effort in Indochina
French Indochina
French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
, as well as the joint Anglo-American decision to employ only four-engined planes for the remainder of the airlift to increase the number of flights and the amount of cargo carried on each flight by taking advantage of those aircraft's higher speeds and greater capacities, the French participation ceased.
Airbase 165 Berlin Tegel
Following the end of the Berlin Airlift in May 1949, Tegel became the Berlin base of the Armée de l'Air, eventually leading to the establishment of base 165 at Berlin Tegel on 1 August 1964. (The end of the Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
and German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
resulted in the deactivation of the Western Allies
Western Allies
The Western Allies were a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It generally includes the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the United States, France and various other European and Latin American countries, but excludes China, the Soviet Union,...
' armed forces in Berlin in July 1994. This in turn led to the decommissioning of base 165 the same year.)
Commercial operations
West Berlin
West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...
's city centre Tempelhof Airport had become too short to accommodate the new-generation jet aircraft
Jet aircraft
A jet aircraft is an aircraft propelled by jet engines. Jet aircraft generally fly much faster than propeller-powered aircraft and at higher altitudes – as high as . At these altitudes, jet engines achieve maximum efficiency over long distances. The engines in propeller-powered aircraft...
such as the Aérospatiale Caravelle
Sud Aviation Caravelle
The Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle was the first short/medium-range jet airliner produced by the French Sud Aviation firm starting in 1955 . The Caravelle was one of the more successful European first generation jetliners, selling throughout Europe and even penetrating the United States market, with...
, Boeing 707
Boeing 707
The Boeing 707 is a four-engine narrow-body commercial passenger jet airliner developed by Boeing in the early 1950s. Its name is most commonly pronounced as "Seven Oh Seven". The first airline to operate the 707 was Pan American World Airways, inaugurating the type's first commercial flight on...
, de Havilland Comet
De Havilland Comet
The de Havilland DH 106 Comet was the world's first commercial jet airliner to reach production. Developed and manufactured by de Havilland at the Hatfield, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom headquarters, it first flew in 1949 and was a landmark in aeronautical design...
except the 4B series, which could operate at Tempelhof without payload restrictions and Douglas DC-8
Douglas DC-8
The Douglas DC-8 is a four-engined narrow-body passenger commercial jet airliner, manufactured from 1958 to 1972 by the Douglas Aircraft Company...
, without imposing payload or range
Range (aircraft)
The maximal total range is the distance an aircraft can fly between takeoff and landing, as limited by fuel capacity in powered aircraft, or cross-country speed and environmental conditions in unpowered aircraft....
restrictions.
West Berlin's special legal status during the Cold War era (1945–1990) meant that all air traffic through the Allied air corridors
West Berlin Air Corridor
During the Cold War era , the West Berlin Air Corridors comprised three regulated airways for civil and military air traffic of the Western Allies between West Berlin and West Germany passing over the former East Germany's territory. The corridors were under control of the all-Allied Berlin Air...
linking the exclave
Enclave and exclave
In political geography, an enclave is a territory whose geographical boundaries lie entirely within the boundaries of another territory.An exclave, on the other hand, is a territory legally or politically attached to another territory with which it is not physically contiguous.These are two...
with West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
was restricted to airlines headquartered in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
or France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
– the three Western victorious powers of World War II. In addition, all flightdeck crewpilots
Aviator
An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...
, flight engineer
Flight engineer
Flight engineers work in three types of aircraft: fixed-wing , rotary wing , and space flight .As airplanes became even larger requiring more engines and complex systems to operate, the workload on the two pilots became excessive during certain critical parts of the flight regime, notably takeoffs...
s and navigator
Navigator
A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation. The navigator's primary responsibility is to be aware of ship or aircraft position at all times. Responsibilities include planning the journey, advising the Captain or aircraft Commander of estimated timing to...
s flying aircraft into and out of West Berlin were required to hold American, British or French passports. During that period, the majority of Tegel's regular commercial flights served German domestic routes, hub airports
Airline hub
An airline hub is an airport that an airline uses as a transfer point to get passengers to their intended destination. It is part of a hub and spoke model, where travelers moving between airports not served by direct flights change planes en route to their destinations...
in Frankfurt
Frankfurt Airport
Frankfurt Airport may refer to:Airports of Frankfurt, Germany:*Frankfurt Airport , the largest airport in Germany*Frankfurt Egelsbach Airport, a general aviation airport*Frankfurt-Hahn Airport , a converted U.S...
, London
London Heathrow Airport
London Heathrow Airport or Heathrow , in the London Borough of Hillingdon, is the busiest airport in the United Kingdom and the third busiest airport in the world in terms of total passenger traffic, handling more international passengers than any other airport around the globe...
, Paris and Amsterdam, points in the United States and popular holiday resorts in the Mediterranean
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
and Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
.
Initially, all commercial flights used the original terminal building (a pre-fabricated shed), which was situated to the North of the runway, at what is today the military part of the airport.
In 1988, Berlin Tegel was named after German aviation pioneer
Aviation history
The history of aviation has extended over more than two thousand years from the earliest attempts in kites and gliders to powered heavier-than-air, supersonic and hypersonic flight.The first form of man-made flying objects were kites...
Otto Lilienthal.
Air France
Air France
Air France
Air France , stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France, , and is one of the world's largest airlines. It is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance...
was the first airline to commence regular commercial operations at Tegel on 2 January 1960.
On that day, Air France, which had served Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
, Frankfurt, Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
and its main base at Paris Le Bourget
Paris – Le Bourget Airport
Paris – Le Bourget Airport is an airport located in Le Bourget, Bonneuil-en-France, and Dugny, north-northeast of Paris, France. It is now used only for general aviation as well as air shows...
/Orly during the previous decade from Tempelhof with Douglas DC-4
Douglas DC-4
The Douglas DC-4 is a four-engined propeller-driven airliner developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It served during World War II, in the Berlin Airlift and into the 1960s in a military role...
, Sud-Est Languedoc and Lockheed Constellation
Lockheed Constellation
The Lockheed Constellation was a propeller-driven airliner powered by four 18-cylinder radial Wright R-3350 engines. It was built by Lockheed between 1943 and 1958 at its Burbank, California, USA, facility. A total of 856 aircraft were produced in numerous models, all distinguished by a...
piston equipment, shifted its entire Berlin operation to Tegel because Tempelhof's runways were too short to permit the introduction of the Sud-Aviation Caravelle, the French flag carrier
Flag carrier
A flag carrier is a transportation company, such as an airline or shipping company, that, being locally registered in a given country, enjoys preferential rights or privileges, accorded by the government, for international operations. It may be a state-run, state-owned or private but...
's new short-haul jet
Jet aircraft
A jet aircraft is an aircraft propelled by jet engines. Jet aircraft generally fly much faster than propeller-powered aircraft and at higher altitudes – as high as . At these altitudes, jet engines achieve maximum efficiency over long distances. The engines in propeller-powered aircraft...
, with a viable payload. (Air France's Caravelle IIIs lacked thrust reverser
Thrust reversal
Thrust reversal, also called reverse thrust, is the temporary diversion of an aircraft engine's exhaust or changing of propeller pitch so that the thrust produced is directed forward, rather than aft. This acts against the forward travel of the aircraft, providing deceleration...
s that would have permitted them to land safely on Tempelhof's short runways with a full commercial payload.)
Following the mid- to late-1960s' introduction by Pan American World Airways
Pan American World Airways
Pan American World Airways, commonly known as Pan Am, was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991...
(Pan Am) and British European Airways
British European Airways
British European Airways or British European Airways Corporation was a British airline which existed from 1946 until 1974. The airline operated European and North African routes from airports around the United Kingdom...
(BEA) of jet aircraft with short-field capabilities that were not payload-restricted on Tempelhof's short runways, Air France experienced a traffic decline on those routes where it competed with Pan Am and BEA, mainly as a result of Tegel's greater distance and poorer accessibility from West Berlin's city centre. Over this period, the French airline's market share halved from 9% to less than 5% despite having withdrawn from Tegel–Düsseldorf in summer 1964 and concentrated its limited resources on Tegel–Frankfurt and Tegel–Munich to maximise the competitive impact on the latter two routes. To reverse growing losses on its Berlin routes, Air France decided to withdraw from the internal German market entirely. This reduced its presence at Tegel to a single daily non-stop scheduled service from/to Paris Orly
Orly Airport
Paris-Orly Airport is an airport located partially in Orly and partially in Villeneuve-le-Roi, south of Paris, France. It has flights to cities in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, North America and Southeast Asia. Prior to the construction of Charles de Gaulle Airport, Orly was...
only. In spring 1969, Air France entered into a joint venture with BEA. This arrangement entailed the latter taking over the former's two remaining German domestic routes to Frankfurt and Munich and operating these with its own aircraft and flightdeck crews from Tempelhof. The Air France-BEA joint venture terminated in autumn 1972.
On 1 November 1972, Air France introduced a second daily return flight between Orly and Tegel, which routed via Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
in both directions to maintain the airline's internal German traffic rights from/to Berlin.
From 1 April 1974, Air France routed both of its daily Orly–Tegel services via Cologne, and from 1 November 1974, it switched them to the French capital's then new Charles de Gaulle (CDG) Airport
Charles de Gaulle International Airport
Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport , also known as Roissy Airport , in the Paris area, is one of the world's principal aviation centres, as well as France's largest airport. It is named after Charles de Gaulle , leader of the Free French Forces and founder of the French Fifth Republic...
.
At the start of the 1976 summer timetable, Air France introduced a third daily CDG
Charles de Gaulle International Airport
Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport , also known as Roissy Airport , in the Paris area, is one of the world's principal aviation centres, as well as France's largest airport. It is named after Charles de Gaulle , leader of the Free French Forces and founder of the French Fifth Republic...
–Tegel frequency, which routed via Düsseldorf and utilised the Boeing 727
Boeing 727
The Boeing 727 is a mid-size, narrow-body, three-engine, T-tailed commercial jet airliner, manufactured by Boeing. The Boeing 727 first flew in 1963, and for over a decade more were built per year than any other jet airliner. When production ended in 1984 a total of 1,832 aircraft had been produced...
-200, a bigger aircraft than the Caravelles used on the company's other services from/to Berlin.
Air France subsequently routed all of its CDG–Tegel flights via Düsseldorf and standardised the aircraft equipment on the 727
Boeing 727
The Boeing 727 is a mid-size, narrow-body, three-engine, T-tailed commercial jet airliner, manufactured by Boeing. The Boeing 727 first flew in 1963, and for over a decade more were built per year than any other jet airliner. When production ended in 1984 a total of 1,832 aircraft had been produced...
-200/200 Advanced (Adv). 727-200/200 Adv continued to operate most of Air France's Berlin services until the end of the 1980s, when they were gradually replaced with state-of-the-art Airbus A320
Airbus A320
The Airbus A320 family is a family of short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger jet airliners manufactured by Airbus Industrie.Airbus was originally a consortium of European aerospace companies, and is now fully owned by EADS. Airbus's name has been Airbus SAS since 2001...
s and more modern Boeing 737
Boeing 737
The Boeing 737 is a short- to medium-range, twin-engine narrow-body jet airliner. Originally developed as a shorter, lower-cost twin-engine airliner derived from Boeing's 707 and 727, the 737 has developed into a family of nine passenger models with a capacity of 85 to 215 passengers...
s.
Pan American World Airways
Pan Am followed Air France into Tegel in May 1964, with a year-round, thrice-weekly direct service to New York JFK
John F. Kennedy International Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport is an international airport located in the borough of Queens in New York City, about southeast of Lower Manhattan. It is the busiest international air passenger gateway to the United States, handling more international traffic than any other airport in North...
, which was operated with Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-8s. These aircraft could not operate from Tempelhof – the airline's West Berlin base at the time – with a viable payload. Launched with DC-8
Douglas DC-8
The Douglas DC-8 is a four-engined narrow-body passenger commercial jet airliner, manufactured from 1958 to 1972 by the Douglas Aircraft Company...
equipment routing through Glasgow Prestwick in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, frequency subsequently increased to four flights a week, while the intermediate stop was cut out. Following the introduction of a daily Berlin Tempelhof–Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel
Hamburg Airport
Hamburg Airport , also known as Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel Airport , is an international airport serving Hamburg, Germany.It originally covered . Since then, the site has grown more than tenfold to . The main apron covers . The airport is north of the centre of the city of Hamburg in the Fuhlsbüttel...
–London Heathrow
London Heathrow Airport
London Heathrow Airport or Heathrow , in the London Borough of Hillingdon, is the busiest airport in the United Kingdom and the third busiest airport in the world in terms of total passenger traffic, handling more international passengers than any other airport around the globe...
727 feeder flight that connected with the airline's transatlantic services
Transatlantic flight
Transatlantic flight is the flight of an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean. A transatlantic flight may proceed east-to-west, originating in Europe or Africa and terminating in North America or South America, or it may go in the reverse direction, west-to-east...
at the latter airport in April 1971, Pan Am withdrew its non-stop Tegel–JFK
John F. Kennedy International Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport is an international airport located in the borough of Queens in New York City, about southeast of Lower Manhattan. It is the busiest international air passenger gateway to the United States, handling more international traffic than any other airport in North...
service at the end of the summer timetable, in October of that year.
Following the cessation of direct Tegel–New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
scheduled services, Pan Am continued to operate affinity group/Advanced Booking Charter (ABC) flights from Tegel to the USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on an ad hoc basis.
From the start of the 1974–75 winter season, Pan Am began operating a series of short- to medium-haul week-end charter flights from Tegel under contract to a leading West German
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
tour operator
Tour operator
A tour operator typically combines tour and travel components to create a holiday. The most common example of a tour operator's product would be a flight on a charter airline plus a transfer from the airport to a hotel and the services of a local representative, all for one price. Niche tour...
. These flights served popular resorts in the Alpine
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
region and the Mediterranean. Following a major reduction in the airline's scheduled activities at Tempelhof as a result of co-ordinating its flight times with British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
(rather than operating competitive schedules), this helped increase utilisation of the 727s based at that airport, especially on weekends.
In addition to operating a limited number of commercial flights from Tegel prior to its move from Tempelhof on 1 September 1975, Pan Am used it as a diversion airfield
Diversion airport
Diversion airports are suitable airports capable of handling a particular ETOPS rated aircraft during an emergency landing and whose flying distance at the point of emergency shall not exceed the ETOPS diversion period of that particular aircraft....
.
The move from Tempelhof to Tegel resulted in all of Pan Am's Berlin operations being concentrated at the latter.
1976 was the first year since 1972 the steady decline in scheduled domestic air traffic from and to West Berlin was arrested and reversed. The first expansion in Pan Am's Berlin operation since the move to Tegel occurred during that year's Easter festival period, when the airline temporarily stationed a Boeing 707-320B at the airport to cope with the seasonal rush on the prime Berlin–Frankfurt
Frankfurt Airport
Frankfurt Airport may refer to:Airports of Frankfurt, Germany:*Frankfurt Airport , the largest airport in Germany*Frankfurt Egelsbach Airport, a general aviation airport*Frankfurt-Hahn Airport , a converted U.S...
route.
From late 1979, Pan Am began updating its Berlin fleet. This entailed phasing out all 727-100s by 1983. The first stage involved replacing two of the 13 German-based aircraft with a pair of stretched Boeing 727-200s originally destined for Ozark Air Lines
Ozark Air Lines
Ozark Air Lines was a commercial airline that operated in the United States from 1950 until 1986, when it was purchased by Trans World Airlines. A second, smaller airline by that same name operated in 2000-2001. Ozark, from 1950 until 1986, had its headquarters on the grounds of Lambert-St. Louis...
to add more capacity to Berlin–Frankfurt. This was followed by an order for eight additional 727-200s, with deliveries slated to begin in October 1981. After initially cancelling the order due to the airline's deteriorating finances and economic environment, it was subsequently reinstated, with deliveries due to commence in December 1981.
In the interim, a number of Boeing 737-200/200 Adv were leased from 1982.
The largest-ever expansion of Pan Am's scheduled internal German services occurred during summer 1984, when the airline's aircraft movements at Tegel increased by 20%. This coincided with the relocation of the US carrier's German and Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
an headquarters from Frankfurt to Berlin on 1 May 1984.
Pan Am began introducing widebodied aircraft
Wide-body aircraft
A wide-body aircraft is a large airliner with two passenger aisles, also known as a widebody aircraft or twin-aisle aircraft. The typical fuselage diameter is . In the typical wide-body economy cabin, passengers are seated seven to ten abreast, allowing a total capacity of 200 to 850 passengers...
on its Berlin routes in the mid-1980s. A pair of Airbus A300
Airbus A300
The Airbus A300 is a short- to medium-range widebody jet airliner. Launched in 1972 as the world's first twin-engined widebody, it was the first product of Airbus Industrie, a consortium of European aerospace companies, wholly owned today by EADS...
s replaced 727-200s on Berlin–Frankfurt. The A300
Airbus A300
The Airbus A300 is a short- to medium-range widebody jet airliner. Launched in 1972 as the world's first twin-engined widebody, it was the first product of Airbus Industrie, a consortium of European aerospace companies, wholly owned today by EADS...
s were subsequently replaced with Airbus A310
Airbus A310
The Airbus A310 is a medium- to long-range twin-engine widebody jet airliner. Launched in July 1978, it was the second aircraft created by Airbus Industrie,a consortium of European aerospace companies, Airbus is now fully owned by EADS and since 2001 has been known as Airbus SAS. the consortium of...
s. As these were −300 series aircraft that had sufficient range to cross the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
non-stop, this enabled reintroduction of non-stop, daily Tegel–JFK scheduled services from 1987.
Pan Am Express
Ransome Airlines
Ransome Airlines was a commuter airline which was headquartered at Northeast Philadelphia Airport in Northeast Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded by Dawson Ransome, it began operations as an independent carrier in 1967. Ransome was particularly noted for operating the Dash 7 as it...
, the regional commuter arm of Pan Am, began operating from Berlin Tegel in November 1987 with two Avions de Transport Régional (ATR) 42
ATR 42
-Civil operators:The largest operators of the ATR-42 are FedEx Express, Airlinair, TRIP Linhas Aéreas,and Mexico City-based Aeromar respectively. Number of aircraft as of 2010:Some 70 other airlines operate smaller numbers of the type....
commuter turboprop
Turboprop
A turboprop engine is a type of turbine engine which drives an aircraft propeller using a reduction gear.The gas turbine is designed specifically for this application, with almost all of its output being used to drive the propeller...
s. It operated year-round scheduled services to secondary and tertiary destinations that could not be viably served with Pan Am's Tegel-based "mainline" fleet of Boeing 727-200s and Airbus A310s. These included Basle, Bremen
Bremen
The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...
, Dortmund
Dortmund
Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
, Hanover
Hanover
Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
, Innsbruck
Innsbruck
- Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus...
, Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...
, Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...
, Milan, Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, Stockholm and Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. In addition, Pan Am Express also helped Pan Am increase the number of flights on some of the other scheduled routes it used to serve from Berlin such as Tegel–Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
by operating additional off-peak frequencies.
British Airways
British Airways was the last of West Berlin's three main scheduled carriers to commence regular operations from Tegel following the move from Tempelhof on 1 September 1975. However, like Pan Am, it and its predecessor BEA had used the airport as a diversion airfield before.
Initially, all British Airways services from Tegel – with the exception of the daily non-stop service to London Heathrow – continued to be operated by BAC One-Eleven
BAC One-Eleven
The British Aircraft Corporation One-Eleven, also known as the BAC-111, BAC-1-11 or BAC 1-11, was a British short-range jet airliner of the 1960s and 1970s...
500s. The daily Heathrow
London Heathrow Airport
London Heathrow Airport or Heathrow , in the London Borough of Hillingdon, is the busiest airport in the United Kingdom and the third busiest airport in the world in terms of total passenger traffic, handling more international passengers than any other airport around the globe...
non-stop was operated with Hawker Siddeley Trident
Hawker Siddeley Trident
The Hawker Siddeley HS 121 Trident was a British short/medium-range three-engined jet airliner designed by de Havilland and built by Hawker Siddeley in the 1960s and 1970s...
2E/3B equipment based at that airport until the end of the 1975 summer season. (It subsequently reverted to a One-Eleven
BAC One-Eleven
The British Aircraft Corporation One-Eleven, also known as the BAC-111, BAC-1-11 or BAC 1-11, was a British short-range jet airliner of the 1960s and 1970s...
500 operation.)
From 1983, British Airways began updating its Berlin fleet. This entailed phasing out the ageing One-Elevens, which were replaced with new Boeing 737–200 Adv.
During the second half of the 1980s, British Airways augmented its Berlin 737s with regional airliner
Regional airliner
A regional airliner or a feederliner is a small airliner designed to fly up to 100 passengers on short-haul flights, usually feeding larger carriers' hubs from small markets. This class of airliners are typically flown by the regional airlines that are either contracted by or subsidiaries of the...
s. These initially comprised British Aerospace (BAe) 748s (from 1986) and subsequently BAe ATPs (from 1989). The introduction of these turboprops enabled the airline to serve shorter and thinner regional domestic routes from Berlin more economically. It also permitted a frequency increase, thereby enhancing competitiveness.
Other operators
From 1966 until 1968, UK independent Lloyd International
Lloyd International Airways
Lloyd International Airways Ltd was a private, British independentindependent from government-owned corporations airline formed in 1961 to operate worldwide charter flights. It commenced operations with a single Douglas DC-4 piston airliner from Cambridge Marshall Airport. Lloyd International...
was contracted by Neckermann und Reisen, the tour operator of West German mail-order concern Neckermann
Arcandor
Arcandor AG is a holding company located in Essen, Germany that oversees companies operating in the businesses of mail order and internet shopping, department stores and tourism services. It was created in 1999 through the merger of Karstadt Warenhaus AG, which was founded in 1920, and Quelle...
, to launch a series of inclusive tour (IT) flights from Tegel. These flights were operated with Bristol Britannia
Bristol Britannia
The Bristol Type 175 Britannia was a British medium-to-long-range airliner built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1952 to fly across the British Empire...
turboprops. They served principal Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an holiday resorts in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands.
From April 1968, all non-scheduled services, i.e. primarily the rapidly growing number of IT holiday flights that several UK independentindependent from government-owned corporation
Government-owned corporation
A government-owned corporation, state-owned company, state-owned entity, state enterprise, publicly owned corporation, government business enterprise, or parastatal is a legal entity created by a government to undertake commercial activities on behalf of an owner government...
s airlines as well as a number of US supplemental carriersUS non-scheduled airlines as classified by the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
in 1963 had mainly operated from Tempelhof since the early 1960s under contract to West Berlin's leading package tour operators, were concentrated at Tegel. This traffic redistribution between West Berlin's two commercial airports was intended to alleviate Tempelhof's increasing congestion and to make better use of Tegel, which was underutilised at the time.
During that period, the Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
charter carriers had begun replacing their obsolete propliner
Propliner
A propliner is a large, propeller-driven airliner. Typically, the term is used for piston-powered airliners that flew before the beginning of the jet age, not for modern turbine-powered propeller airliners...
s with contemporary turboprop and jet aircraft types, which suffered payload and range restrictions on Tempelhof's short runways. The absence of such restrictions at Tegel gave airlines greater operational flexibility regarding aircraft types and destinations. This was the reason charter carriers favoured Tegel despite being less popular than Tempelhof because of its greater distance from West Berlin's city centre and poor public transport links.
A new passenger handling facility exclusively dedicated to charter airline passengers was opened to accommodate the additional traffic. Both this facility (a wooden shed) and the original terminal used by Air France's and Pan Am's scheduled passengers were located on the airport's north side.
Following the transfer of all charter traffic to Tegel, Channel Airways, Dan-Air Services, Laker Airways and Modern Air Transport began stationing several of their jets
Jet aircraft
A jet aircraft is an aircraft propelled by jet engines. Jet aircraft generally fly much faster than propeller-powered aircraft and at higher altitudes – as high as . At these altitudes, jet engines achieve maximum efficiency over long distances. The engines in propeller-powered aircraft...
at the airport.
Channel Airways's collapse in early 1972 provided the impetus for Dan-Air to take over the failed carrier's charter contracts and to expand its own operations at Tegel.
Dan-Air, one of Britain's foremost wholly private, independent airlines during the 1970s and 80s, eventually became the third-biggest operator at Tegel Airport, ahead of Air France. In addition to firmly establishing itself as the airport's and West Berlin's leading charter airline, it also operated scheduled services linking Tegel with Amsterdam Schiphol, Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....
and London Gatwick
London Gatwick Airport
Gatwick Airport is located 3.1 miles north of the centre of Crawley, West Sussex, and south of Central London. Previously known as London Gatwick,In 2010, the name changed from London Gatwick Airport to Gatwick Airport...
, its main operating base. By the time that airline was taken over by British Airways at the end of October 1992, it had served Tegel Airport for a quarter of a century.
Modern Air's departure in October 1974 coincided with Aeroamerica's arrival. That carrier's departure following the end of the 1979 summer season was followed by Air Berlin USA's arrival.
Laker Airways's decision to replace its Tegel-based BAC One-Eleven fleet with one of its newly acquired Airbus A300 B4 widebodies
Wide-body aircraft
A wide-body aircraft is a large airliner with two passenger aisles, also known as a widebody aircraft or twin-aisle aircraft. The typical fuselage diameter is . In the typical wide-body economy cabin, passengers are seated seven to ten abreast, allowing a total capacity of 200 to 850 passengers...
from the 1981 summer season resulted in Monarch Airlines taking over that airline's long-standing charter contract with Flug-Union Berlin, one of West Berlin's leading contemporary tour operator
Tour operator
A tour operator typically combines tour and travel components to create a holiday. The most common example of a tour operator's product would be a flight on a charter airline plus a transfer from the airport to a hotel and the services of a local representative, all for one price. Niche tour...
s.
In the late 1980s, Monarch Airlines provided the aircraft as well as the flightdeck crew and maintenance support for Euroberlin France
Euroberlin France
Euroberlin France was a Franco-German joint venture airline founded in 1988. It was jointly owned by Air France and Lufthansa, with the former holding a 51% stake and the latter the remaining 49%...
, a Tegel-based scheduled airline headquartered in Paris, France. Euroberlin was jointly owned by Air France and Lufthansa, with the former holding a 51% majority stake, thereby making it a French legal entity
Entity
An entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, although it need not be a material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity is animate.An entity could be viewed as a set...
and enabling it to conduct commercial airline operations in West Berlin.
The following airlines operated regular services to/from Tegel Airport during the Cold War era as well:
- Court Line AviationCourt LineCourt Line was a prominent British holiday charter airline during the early 1970s based at Luton Airport in Bedfordshire. It also provided bus services in Luton and surrounding areas....
was a major British independent airline of the early 1970s that served Berlin Tegel with a series of regular charter flights from its base at London Luton AirportLondon Luton AirportLondon Luton Airport is an international airport located east of the town centre in the Borough of Luton in Bedfordshire, England and is north of Central London. The airport is from Junction 10a of the M1 motorway...
and Paris Le Bourget AirportLe Bourget AirportParis – Le Bourget Airport is an airport located in Le Bourget, Bonneuil-en-France, and Dugny, north-northeast of Paris, France. It is now used only for general aviation as well as air shows...
between 1970 and 1974 under contract to the students travel company of Berlin's Technical UniversityTechnical University of BerlinThe Technische Universität Berlin is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. Translating the name into English is discouraged by the university, however paraphrasing as Berlin Institute of Technology is recommended by the university if necessary .The TU Berlin was founded...
.
- Touraine Air Transport was a French regional airlineRegional airlineRegional airlines are airlines that operate regional aircraft to provide passenger air service to communities without sufficient demand to attract mainline service...
serving Berlin Tegel from Saarbrücken several times a day on a year-round basis from late 1978 until early 1984.
- Berlin European UK was a Berlin-based UK regional airline founded in 1986 as Berlin Regional UK by a former British Airways general managerGeneral managerGeneral manager is a descriptive term for certain executives in a business operation. It is also a formal title held by some business executives, most commonly in the hospitality industry.-Generic usage:...
for that airline's Berlin operation to begin domestic and international regional scheduled services to destinations not served by any of West Berlin's contemporary scheduled operators from April 1987, utilising BAe Jetstream commuter turboprop planes.
- Trans World AirlinesTrans World AirlinesTrans World Airlines was an American airline that existed from 1925 until it was bought out by and merged with American Airlines in 2001. It was a major domestic airline in the United States and the main U.S.-based competitor of Pan American World Airways on intercontinental routes from 1946...
(TWA), the other major US flag carrier of that era, used to operate affinity group/ABC flights from Tegel to the USA on an ad hoc basis during the early 1970s. When it entered the West Berlin scheduled market in the late 1980s, it initially served BrusselsBrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
twice daily from Berlin Tegel (from 2 August 1987). Daily flights to Frankfurt Rhein-Main AirportFrankfurt AirportFrankfurt Airport may refer to:Airports of Frankfurt, Germany:*Frankfurt Airport , the largest airport in Germany*Frankfurt Egelsbach Airport, a general aviation airport*Frankfurt-Hahn Airport , a converted U.S...
followed (from 1989). Eventually, Berlin Tegel became an important spokeAirline hubAn airline hub is an airport that an airline uses as a transfer point to get passengers to their intended destination. It is part of a hub and spoke model, where travelers moving between airports not served by direct flights change planes en route to their destinations...
for TWA in Europe, following the launch of additional services to ZürichZürichZurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
(via StuttgartStuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
) and AmsterdamAmsterdamAmsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
(via HamburgHamburg-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
). The Berlin Boeing 727-100s connected with transatlantic 747Boeing 747The Boeing 747 is a wide-body commercial airliner and cargo transport, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet, or Queen of the Skies. It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first wide-body ever produced...
s and L-1011s at Brussels, Frankfurt, Zürich and Amsterdam.
In addition to the aforementioned airlines, a host of others – mainly British independents and US supplementals – were frequent visitors to Berlin Tegel, especially during the early 1970s. These included Britannia Airways
Britannia Airways
Britannia Airways was the largest charter airline in the United Kingdom, rebranded as Thomsonfly in 2005. Its main bases were Gatwick, London Luton, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow...
, British Airtours
British Airtours
British Airtours was a UK charter airline with flight operations out of London Gatwick and Manchester Airport.Originally established as BEA Airtours in 1969, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of then state-owned British Airways following the British European Airways — British Overseas Airways...
, British United
British United Airways
British United Airways was a private, independentindependent from government-owned corporations British airline formed as a result of the merger of Airwork Services and Hunting-Clan Air Transport in July 1960, making it the largest wholly private airline based in the United Kingdom at the time...
, Caledonian
Caledonian Airways
Caledonian Airways was a wholly private, independentindependent from government-owned corporations Scottish charter airline formed in April 1961. It began with a single Douglas DC-7C leased from Sabena. Caledonian grew rapidly over the coming years to become the leading transatlantic "affinity...
, Caledonian/BUA / British Caledonian
British Caledonian
British Caledonian was a private, British independentindependent from government-owned corporations airline, operating out of Gatwick Airport in the 1970s and 1980s...
, Capitol International Airways
Capitol Air Lines
Capitol Airways , was a charter airline from the United States. It was founded by former Army Air Corps pilots, Jesse Stallings, Richmond McGinnis, and Francis Roach, following the end of World War II. The European Director of Operations was Chuck Carr and the LBG Airport Mngr, P. Landelle...
, Overseas National Airways
Overseas National Airways
The original Overseas National Airways was an American airline, formed in June 1950 as a supplemental carrier. It ceased operations on September 14, 1978. A second related company, took the name in 1978, later renaming to National Airlines, going bankrupt in 1986.- History - First ONA :ONA was...
, Saturn Airways
Saturn Airways
Saturn Airways was a US "supplemental carrier", i.e. a charter airline. It operated from 1948 until 1976. Its headquarters were located on the grounds of Oakland International Airport, Oakland, California.- History :The airline was initially known as All American Airways and used Curtiss C-46...
, Trans International Airlines
Trans International Airlines
Trans International Airlines was an airline which offered charter service from and within the United States. It offered scheduled service operating as Transamerica Airlines in its last decade...
, Transamerica Airlines and World Airways
World Airways
World Airways, Inc. is an American airline headquartered at the HLH Building in Peachtree City, Georgia. For the most part, the company operates non-scheduled services. Its main aircraft and maintenance base is Tampa International Airport.-History:...
. During that period, the airport scene at Berlin Tegel could be very colourful, with Air France Caravelles, the UK independents' BAC One-Elevens, de Havilland Comets and Hawker Siddeley Tridents as well as the US supplementals' Boeing 707s, Convair Coronados and Douglas DC-8s congregating on its ramp
Airport ramp
The airport ramp or apron is part of an airport. It is usually the area where aircraft are parked, unloaded or loaded, refueled or boarded. Although the use of the apron is covered by regulations, such as lighting on vehicles, it is typically more accessible to users than the runway or taxiway...
. During 1974 alone, 22 airlines were operating at Tegel Airport.
Tegel's new terminal takes shape
Construction of a new, hexagonally shaped terminal complex on the airport's south side began during the 1960s. This coincided with the lengthening of the runways to permit fully laden widebodied aircraft to take off and land without restricting their range and construction of a motorway and access road linking the new terminal to the city centre. It became operational on 1 November 1974.A British Airways Lockheed L-1011 Tristar 1, a Laker Airways
Laker Airways
Laker Airways was a wholly private, British independentindependent from government-owned corporations airline founded by Sir Freddie Laker in 1966. It originally was a charter airline flying passengers and cargo worldwide...
McDonnell Douglas DC-10
McDonnell Douglas DC-10
The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 is a three-engine widebody jet airliner manufactured by McDonnell Douglas. The DC-10 has range for medium- to long-haul flights, capable of carrying a maximum 380 passengers. Its most distinguishing feature is the two turbofan engines mounted on underwing pylons and a...
-10, a Pan Am Boeing 747
Boeing 747
The Boeing 747 is a wide-body commercial airliner and cargo transport, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet, or Queen of the Skies. It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first wide-body ever produced...
-100 and an Air France Airbus A300 B2 were among the widebodied aircraft specially flown in for a pre-inauguration of the new terminal on 23 October 1974.
Dan-Air operated the first commercial flight to arrive at the airport's new terminal at 06.00 am local time with a BAC One-Eleven that was in-bound from Tenerife
Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...
.
Tegel becomes main West Berlin airport
Following Pan Am's and British Airways's move from Tempelhof to Tegel on 1 September 1975, the latter replaced Tempelhof as the main airport of West Berlin.Early post-reunification era (1990–1995)
Following Germany's reunificationGerman reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
on 3 October 1990, all access restrictions to the former West Berlin airports were lifted.
Lufthansa resumed flights to Berlin on 28 October 1990, initially operating twelve daily pairs of flights on a limited number of routes, including Tegel–Cologne, Tegel–Frankfurt and Tegel–London Gatwick. To facilitate the German flag carrier's resumption of services from/to Berlin, it purchased Pan Am's Internal German Services (IGS) division for US$150m
Million
One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...
. This included Pan Am's internal German traffic rights as well as its gates and slots at Tegel. This agreement, under which Lufthansa contracted up to seven of Pan Am's Tegel-based Boeing 727-200s operated by that airline's flightdeck and cabin crews to ply its scheduled routes to Munich, Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
and Stuttgart until mid-1991, also facilitated Pan Am's orderly exit from the internal German air transport market after 40 years' uninterrupted service as European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
(EU) legislation prevented it from participating in the internal air transport market of the EU/European Economic Area
European Economic Area
The European Economic Area was established on 1 January 1994 following an agreement between the member states of the European Free Trade Association and the European Community, later the European Union . Specifically, it allows Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to participate in the EU's Internal...
(EEA) as a non-EU/EEA headquartered carrier. However, Pan Am continued operating its daily non-stop Tegel–JFK service until Delta Air Lines
Delta Air Lines
Delta Air Lines, Inc. is a major airline based in the United States and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The airline operates an extensive domestic and international network serving all continents except Antarctica. Delta and its subsidiaries operate over 4,000 flights every day...
assumed most of Pan Am's transatlantic scheduled services during 1991. Pan Am Express, which was not included in Pan Am's IGS sale to Lufthansa, continued operating all of its domestic and international regional scheduled routes from Tegel as an independent legal entity until its acquisition by TWA in 1991. Following TWA's takeover of Pan Am Express, the former Pan Am Express Berlin operations were closed. Until December 1994, Lufthansa also contracted Euroberlin to operate some of its internal German flights from its new Tegel base, making use of that airline's gates and slots at Tegel as well.
As a US-registered airline Air Berlin found itself in the same situation as Pan Am following German reunification. It chose to reconstitute itself as a German company.
These were the days when liberalisation of the EU/EEA internal air transport market was still in progress and when domestic traffic rights were reserved for each member country's own airlines. The German government therefore insisted that all non-German EU/EEA carriers either withdraw their internal German scheduled services from Berlin or transfer them to majority German-owned subsidiaries
Subsidiary
A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...
by the end of 1992. It also wanted the bulk of all charter flights from Berlin to be operated by German airlines. These measures were squarely aimed at UK carriers with a major presence in the internal German air transport market from Berlin as well as the city's charter market, specifically British Airways and Dan-Air. Lufthansa and other German airlines reportedly lobbied their government to curtail British Airways's and Dan-Air's activities in Berlin, arguing that German airlines enjoyed no equivalent rights in the UK. This resulted in British Airways taking a 49% stake in Friedrichshafen
Friedrichshafen
This article is about a German town. For the Danish town, see Frederikshavn, and for the Finnish town, see Fredrikshamn .Friedrichshafen is a university city on the northern side of Lake Constance in Southern Germany, near the borders with Switzerland and Austria.It is the district capital of the...
-based German regional airline Delta Air, renaming it Deutsche BA (DBA) and transferring its internal German traffic rights to the new airline. BA also replaced the commuter aircraft DBA had inherited from Delta Air with new Boeing 737-300s. These in turn replaced the Boeing 737–200 Adv and BAe ATP airliner
Airliner
An airliner is a large fixed-wing aircraft for transporting passengers and cargo. Such aircraft are operated by airlines. Although the definition of an airliner can vary from country to country, an airliner is typically defined as an aircraft intended for carrying multiple passengers in commercial...
s British Airways had used on its internal German scheduled services from Berlin.
At the time of German reunification, Dan-Air's Berlin fleet numbered five aircraft, comprising three Boeing 737s (one −400, one −300 and one −200 Adv) and two HS 748s. The former were used to fly locally based holidaymakers from Tegel to overseas resorts on IT flights under contract to German package tour operators. The latter operated the airline's scheduled routes linking Tegel with Amsterdam and Saarbrücken. Dan-Air discontinued its charter operations from Berlin on behalf of German tour operators at the end of the 1990–91 winter season and replaced the ageing 748 turboprop it had used on its Amsterdam schedule since the mid-1980s with larger, more advanced BAe 146 100 series jet equipment. It also introduced new direct scheduled air links from Berlin to Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
and Newcastle via Amsterdam. The Saarbrücken route was withdrawn at the end of the 1991 summer season, while the Amsterdam route was gradually taken over by NLM Cityhopper
NLM CityHopper
NLM CityHopper full name Nederlandse Luchtvaart Maatschappij, was a Dutch commuter airline, founded in 1966.-History:The carrier was formed as Nederlandse Luchtvaart Maatschappij in 1966...
, the contemporary regional arm of Dutch flag carrier KLM. This reduced Dan-Air's presence in Berlin to a single daily scheduled service as well as up to four weekly charter flights linking the airline's Gatwick base with its former overseas base at Tegel. Flights were operated by Gatwick aircraft and crews until the firm's takeover by British Airways at the end of October 1992. The restructuring of Dan-Air's long-established Berlin operation was not only the result of political changes. It was also driven by its own corporate restructuring, which aimed to refocus the airline as a Gatwick-based short-haul "mainline" scheduled operator and involved phasing out its smaller aircraft and thinner routes.
Other airlines that commenced/resumed scheduled operations from Berlin Tegel at the beginning of the post-reunification era included Aero Lloyd
Aero Lloyd
Aero Lloyd Flugreisen GmbH & Co was a charter airline based in Oberursel, Germany.- History :Aero Lloyd was originally founded on December 5, 1980. It was originally headquartered in Frankfurt. The airline start operation with 3 McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 ex Garuda Indonesia.The airline ceased...
, Alitalia
Alitalia
Alitalia - Linee Aeree Italiane S.p.A. , in its later stages known as Alitalia - Linee Aeree Italiane S.p.A. in Extraordinary Administration, was the former Italian flag carrier...
, American Airlines
American Airlines
American Airlines, Inc. is the world's fourth-largest airline in passenger miles transported and operating revenues. American Airlines is a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas adjacent to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...
, Austrian Airlines
Austrian Airlines
Austrian Airlines is the flag carrier airline of Austria, headquartered in Office Park 2 on the grounds of Vienna International Airport in Schwechat, Wien-Umgebung and a subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG. Together with regional subsidiary Tyrolean Airways and charter arm Lauda Air, it operates...
, SAS Eurolink, Swissair
Swissair
Swissair AG was the former national airline of Switzerland.It was formed from a merger between Balair and Ad Astra Aero , in 1931...
, TWA and United Airlines
United Airlines
United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees (which includes the entire holding company United Continental...
.
Aero Lloyd, Germania
Germania (airline)
Germania Fluggesellschaft mbH, operating as Germania, is an airline with its headquarters in Berlin, Germany. It operates scheduled and chartered flights and aircraft lease services...
and Condor Berlin began operating charter flights from Berlin Tegel during that period.
1995 onwards
The events of the early post-reunification years (1990–1995) were followed by further, high-profile international route launches and growing consolidation among German airlines with a major presence at Tegel.Amongst the former were the December 2005 launch of Tegel Airport's first-ever scheduled service to the Qatar
Qatar
Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...
i capital Doha
Doha
Doha is the capital city of the state of Qatar. Located on the Persian Gulf, it had a population of 998,651 in 2008, and is also one of the municipalities of Qatar...
by Qatar Airways
Qatar Airways
Qatar Airways Company Q.C.S.C. , operating as Qatar Airways, is the flag carrier of Qatar. Headquartered in the Qatar Airways Tower in Doha, it operates a hub-and-spoke network, linking over 100 international destinations from its base in Doha, using a fleet of over 100 aircraft...
, operated non-stop at an initial frequency of four flights a week, and Air Berlin's November 2010 launch of non-stop, thrice-weekly Tegel–Dubai
Dubai
Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
flights (another first). This was followed by the latter's May 2011 launch of a non-stop, four-times-a-week Tegel–JFK service.
The latter began with BA's mid-2003 sale for a symbolic €1 (72p
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
) of its German subsidiary DBA to Intro Verwaltungsgesellschaft, a Nuremberg-based consultancy and investment company headed by German entrepreneur Hans Rudolf Wöhrl who founded German charter airline Eurowings
Eurowings
Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG, part of Lufthansa Regional, is an airline with its head office in the Düsseldorf Administrative Center in Düsseldorf, Germany...
and also was a former DBA board member. Further consolidation among Tegel's German airlines took place when Air Berlin entered into an agreement to assume Germania's management shortly before the death of that airline's founder, took over DBA and gained control of LTU
LTU International
LTU Lufttransport-Unternehmen GmbH was an airline based in Düsseldorf, Germany, now fully owned by Air Berlin. The initials stand for the German phrase LuftTransport-Unternehmen . It operated scheduled services on medium and long-haul routes, as well as charter services...
. These events occurred in November 2005, August 2006 and March 2007, respectively.
Terminals
- The main building is the original part of the airport. It consists of two parts:
- Terminal A is a hexagon-shaped ring concourse with a parking area, taxi stands and bus stops in its middle. It features 14 jetways (all other terminal feature movable stairs for boarding) which correspond to 16 respective check-in counters (A00–A15), with jetways 1 and 14 each serving two check-in counters. There is no transit zone, which means that each gate has its own security clearance checkpoint and exit for arriving passengers. Therefore, direct flight connections are not possible. All major airlines arrive and depart here (especially "prestigious" flights like intercontinental services or flights to the busy European hub airports). The whole rooftop works as a visitor platform. Terminal A is capable of handling wide-bodied aircraft like the Boeing 767Boeing 767The Boeing 767 is a mid-size, wide-body twin-engine jet airliner built by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. It was the manufacturer's first wide-body twinjet and its first airliner with a two-crew glass cockpit. The aircraft features two turbofan engines, a supercritical wing, and a conventional tail...
on two positions. - Terminal B (also called "Nebel-Hall" after German spaceflight pioneer Rudolf NebelRudolf NebelRudolf Nebel was a spaceflight advocate active in Germany's amateur rocket group, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt in the 1930s and in rebuilding German rocketry following World War II....
) is a converted former waiting area in a side wing of the main building (check-in counters B20–B39). There is only one bus-boarding aircraft stand directly serving it.
- Terminal A is a hexagon-shaped ring concourse with a parking area, taxi stands and bus stops in its middle. It features 14 jetways (all other terminal feature movable stairs for boarding) which correspond to 16 respective check-in counters (A00–A15), with jetways 1 and 14 each serving two check-in counters. There is no transit zone, which means that each gate has its own security clearance checkpoint and exit for arriving passengers. Therefore, direct flight connections are not possible. All major airlines arrive and depart here (especially "prestigious" flights like intercontinental services or flights to the busy European hub airports). The whole rooftop works as a visitor platform. Terminal A is capable of handling wide-bodied aircraft like the Boeing 767
- Terminal C was opened in May 2007 as a temporary solution (as the airport is scheduled for closure in 2012) because all other terminals were full to capacity. It is largely used by Air BerlinAir BerlinAir Berlin PLC & Co. Luftverkehrs KG is Germany's second largest airline, after Lufthansa, and Europe's sixth largest airline in terms of passengers....
, which gave it the name Air-Berlin-Terminal. It features 26 check-in counters (C40–C57, C60–C67) and 8 bus-boarding aircraft stands. From 2008 until August 2009, 5 additional aircraft stands were constructed and the building was expanded by approximately 50% of its original size, in order to handle another 1.5 million passengers per year. The extended terminal now houses a transit zone for connecting passengers (which did not exist at any other terminal). Due to noise protection treaties, the overall number of aircraft stands at Tegel airport is restricted, thus aircraft stands on the apron (serving Terminals A and D) had to be removed for compensation. Terminal C is able to handle widebody-aircraft like Air Berlin's Airbus A330Airbus A330The Airbus A330 is a wide-body twin-engine jet airliner made by Airbus, a division of EADS. Versions of the A330 have a range of and can accommodate up to 335 passengers in a two-class layout or carry of cargo....
, but no jetway bridges are available. - Terminal D, a converted car park, was opened in 2001. It features 22 check-in counters (D70–D91), with one bus-boarding gate and two walk-boarding gates. Most passengers of airlines operating smaller aircraft (especially Lufthansa RegionalLufthansa RegionalLufthansa Regional is the regional airline alliance of the largest German airline, Lufthansa. It transports 10.5 million passengers a year, serving over 80 destinations and over 150 routes...
) are brought to the remote aircraft stands by bus from here. Terminal D is the only part of the airport that remains open all night long. The lower level arrival area is called Terminal E.
Tegel Airport was originally planned to have a second hexagonal terminal like the main building. The second terminal ring was never built because of Berlin municipal budgetary constraints and the post-reunification decision to replace the former West Berlin airports with the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
Airlines and destinations
Additionally, several airlines operate charter flights out of the airport, including:
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London
Paris
Moscow
Public transport
The airport is linked by several BVGBerliner Verkehrsbetriebe
The is the main public transport company of Berlin, the capital city of Germany. It manages the city's U-Bahn underground railway, tram, bus and ferry networks, but not the S-Bahn urban rail system....
bus lines, which offer connection to the U-Bahn
Berlin U-Bahn
The Berlin is a rapid transit railway in Berlin, the capital city of Germany, and is a major part of the public transport system of that city. Opened in 1902, the serves 173 stations spread across ten lines, with a total track length of , about 80% of which is underground...
and S-Bahn
Berlin S-Bahn
The Berlin S-Bahn is a rapid transit system in and around Berlin, the capital city of Germany. It consists of 15 lines and is integrated with the mostly underground U-Bahn to form the backbone of Berlin's rapid transport system...
, as well as to Regional Express trains and long distance trains
Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn AG is the German national railway company, a private joint stock company . Headquartered in Berlin, it came into existence in 1994 as the successor to the former state railways of Germany, the Deutsche Bundesbahn of West Germany and the Deutsche Reichsbahn of East Germany...
:
- The JetExpress TXL bus runs to Beusselstraße S-Bahn stationBerlin Beusselstraße railway stationBeusselstraße is a station in the Moabit district of Berlin. It is served by the S-Bahn lines and .There is an express bus link between this station and Tegel Airport....
, Berlin HauptbahnhofBerlin Hauptbahnhof' , is the main railway station in Berlin, Germany. It began full operation two days after a ceremonial opening on 26 May 2006. It is located on the site of the historic Lehrter Bahnhof, and until it opened as a main line station, it was a stop on the Berlin S-Bahn suburban railway temporarily...
(within 20 minutes), Unter den LindenUnter den LindenUnter den Linden is a boulevard in the Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. It is named for its linden trees that line the grassed pedestrian mall between two carriageways....
, and AlexanderplatzAlexanderplatzAlexanderplatz is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin, near the Fernsehturm. Berliners often call it simply Alex, referring to a larger neighborhood stretching from Mollstraße in the northeast to Spandauer Straße and the City Hall in the southwest.-Early...
(within 40 minutes). - The X9 express bus runs to Jakob-Kaiser Platz U-Bahn station (within 5 minutes), Jungfernheide S-Bahn and Regional Express station, and Zoologischer Garten U-Bahn/S-Bahn/Regional Express stationBerlin Zoologischer Garten railway stationBerlin Zoologischer Garten station was the central transport facility in West Berlin during the division of the city, and thereafter for the western central area of Berlin until opening of the new Berlin Central Station on 28 May 2006...
(within 20 minutes). - The 109 bus runs to Jakob-Kaiser Platz U-Bahn station, Charlottenburg S-Bahn and Regional Express station (within 20 minutes), and Zoologischer Garten U-Bahn/S-Bahn/Regional Express stationBerlin Zoologischer Garten railway stationBerlin Zoologischer Garten station was the central transport facility in West Berlin during the division of the city, and thereafter for the western central area of Berlin until opening of the new Berlin Central Station on 28 May 2006...
(within 30 minutes). - The 128 bus runs to Kurt-Schumacher-Platz U-Bahn stationKurt-Schumacher-Platz (Berlin U-Bahn)Kurt-Schumacher-Platz is a station on the line of the Berlin U-Bahn. There is a bus link outside the station connecting Berlin's Tegel International Airport to the U-Bahn network. The station was opened on May 3, 1956 and named after famous German politician Kurt Schumacher.The station was built...
(within 10 minutes) and Osloer Straße U-Bahn station (within 25 minutes).
Note: The Alt-Tegel U-Bahn station
Alt-Tegel (Berlin U-Bahn)
Alt-Tegel is a Berlin U-Bahn station located on the .It was constructed by B. Grimmek and opened as "Tegel" station in 1958. In 1992, the station was renamed to Alt-Tegel...
and Tegel S-Bahn station do not serve Tegel Airport, but rather the Tegel quarter
Tegel
Tegel is a locality in the Berlin borough of Reinickendorf on the shore of Lake Tegel. The Tegel locality, the second largest in area of the 95 Berlin districts, also includes the neighbourhood of Saatwinkel.-History:...
of Berlin. An underground station directly serving the airport had been planned since the 1960s but was never built.
Accidents and incidents
There are no recorded, fatal accidents involving commercial airline operations at Berlin Tegel itself. However, two commercial flights, one of which was due to arrive at Tegel Airport and the other which had departed the airport, were involved in fatal accidents. These accidents are listed below:- On 15 November 1966, Clipper München, a Pan Am Boeing 727–21 (registration N317PA) operating the return leg of the airline's daily cargo flight from Berlin to Frankfurt Rhein-Main Airport (flight number PA 708Pan Am Flight 708Pan Am Flight 708 was a cargo flight that crashed less than 10 miles west-southwest of Tegel Airport in Berlin, Germany, in the early morning hours of November 15, 1966. The flight was a Boeing 727 routed from Frankfurt to Berlin-Tegel and was on initial approach. All three crew members perished....
) was due to land that night at Tegel Airport, rather than Tempelhof, due to runway resurfacing work taking place at that time at the latter. Berlin Control had cleared flight 708 for an Instrument Landing SystemInstrument Landing SystemAn instrument landing system is a ground-based instrument approach system that provides precision guidance to an aircraft approaching and landing on a runway, using a combination of radio signals and, in many cases, high-intensity lighting arrays to enable a safe landing during instrument...
(ILS) approach to Tegel Airport's runway 08, soon after the crew had begun its descent from Flight LevelFlight levelA Flight Level is a standard nominal altitude of an aircraft, in hundreds of feet. This altitude is calculated from the International standard pressure datum of 1013.25 hPa , the average sea-level pressure, and therefore is not necessarily the same as the aircraft's true altitude either...
(FL) 090 to FL 030 before entering the southwest air corridor over East GermanyGerman Democratic RepublicThe German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
on the last stretch of its journey to Berlin. The aircraft impacted the ground near DallgowDallgow-DöberitzDallgow-Döberitz is a municipality in the Havelland district, in Brandenburg, Germany.-Geography:It consists of the villages Dallgow-Döberitz, Rohrbeck and Seeburg. To the east it shares border with the Spandau borough of Berlin. Neighbouring Brandenburg municipalities are Falkensee in the north...
, East Germany, almost immediately after the crew had acknowledged further instructions received from Berlin Control, just 10 mi (16.1 km) from Tegel Airport. All three crew members lost their lives in this accident. Visibility was poor, and it was snowing at the time of the accident. Following the accident, the SovietSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
military authorities in East Germany returned only half of the aircraft's wreckage to their US counterparts in West Berlin. This excluded vital parts, such as the flight data recorderFlight data recorderA flight data recorder is an electronic device employed to record any instructions sent to any electronic systems on an aircraft. It is a device used to record specific aircraft performance parameters...
(FDR), the cockpit voice recorderCockpit voice recorderA cockpit voice recorder , often referred to as a "black box", is a flight recorder used to record the audio environment in the flight deck of an aircraft for the purpose of investigation of accidents and incidents...
(CVR) as well as the plane's flight control systems, its navigationAir navigationThe basic principles of air navigation are identical to general navigation, which includes the process of planning, recording, and controlling the movement of a craft from one place to another....
and communication equipment. The subsequent National Transportation Safety BoardNational Transportation Safety BoardThe National Transportation Safety Board is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incidents, certain types of highway crashes, ship and marine...
(NTSB) investigation report concluded that the aircraft's descent below its altitude clearance limit was the accident's probable cause. However, the NTSB was unable to establish the factors that had caused the crew to descendDescent (aircraft)A descent during air travel is any portion where an aircraft decreases altitude, and is the opposite of an ascent or climb. Descents are an essential component of an approach to landing...
below its cleared minimum altitude.
- On 24 November 2001, a CrossairCrossairCrossair Ltd. Co. for Regional European Air Transport was a regional airline headquartered on the grounds of EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg in Saint-Louis, Haut-Rhin, France, near Basel, Switzerland...
Avro RJ100 (registration: HB-IXM) operating flight LX 3597Crossair Flight 3597Crossair Flight LX 3597 was an Avro RJ100 regional airliner, registration HB-IXM, on a scheduled flight from Berlin, Germany to Zurich, Switzerland that crashed during its approach to land at Zurich Airport on 24 November 2001...
from Berlin Tegel to Zürich on behalf of Swiss International Air LinesSwiss International Air LinesSwiss International Air Lines AG is the principal airline of Switzerland operating scheduled services in Europe and to North America, South America, Africa and Asia. Its main hub is Zurich Airport...
crashed during a night time approach to Zürich's Kloten Airport, killing 24 of the aircraft's 33 occupants (three out of five crew members and 21 out of 28 passengers).
The following notable, non-fatal incidents involving airline operations occurred at Tegel. These include commercial flights that were about to depart or had actually departed/arrived as well as unscheduled stopovers:
- Between 1969 and 1982, Berlin Tegel was the destination of several aircraft hijackingAircraft hijackingAircraft hijacking is the unlawful seizure of an aircraft by an individual or a group. In most cases, the pilot is forced to fly according to the orders of the hijackers. Occasionally, however, the hijackers have flown the aircraft themselves, such as the September 11 attacks of 2001...
s involving LOT Polish AirlinesLOT Polish AirlinesPolskie Linie Lotnicze LOT S.A. , trading as LOT Polish Airlines, is the flag carrier of Poland. Based in Warsaw, LOT was established in 1929, making it one of the world's oldest airlines still in operation. Using a fleet of 55 aircraft, LOT operates a complex network to 60 destinations in Europe,...
domestic flights within PolandPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. The hijackings were a means of forcing the authorities in communist Poland to let the hijackers emigrate from the Eastern BlocEastern blocThe term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
. Once the aircraft had landed at Tegel, the French military authorities in charge of the airport during the Cold War era let the hijackers and anyone else who did not wish to return to Poland disembark and claim political asylum in West Berlin. The aircraft, its crew and those passengers who did not want to disembark were subsequently returned to Poland.
- Upon completing the repair and run-up of the faulty engine that had caused a rejected takeoffRejected takeoffA rejected takeoff or RTO is the situation in which it is decided to abort the takeoff of an airplane...
due to an engine oil warning at Berlin Tegel during the late 1980s, a Dan-Air Boeing 727–200 Adv collided with a jetway at the airport's terminal building while maintenance engineers taxied the aircraft back to its stand. This badly injured the ground crew member manning the jetway and ruptured the fully refuelled aircraft's centre wing tank at the left wing rootWing rootThe wing root is the part of the wing on a fixed-wing aircraft that is closest to the fuselage. On a simple monoplane configuration, this is usually easy to identify...
. As a result, a large quantity of jet fuelJet fuelJet fuel is a type of aviation fuel designed for use in aircraft powered by gas-turbine engines. It is clear to straw-colored in appearance. The most commonly used fuels for commercial aviation are Jet A and Jet A-1 which are produced to a standardized international specification...
spilled onto the tarmac. The maintenance engineers' failure to pressurise the aircraft's hydraulics had resulted in a complete loss of hydraulic pressure just before reaching the stand, making it impossible to steer the aircraft and rendering the brakes ineffective.
- On 7 January 1997, Austrian AirlinesAustrian AirlinesAustrian Airlines is the flag carrier airline of Austria, headquartered in Office Park 2 on the grounds of Vienna International Airport in Schwechat, Wien-Umgebung and a subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG. Together with regional subsidiary Tyrolean Airways and charter arm Lauda Air, it operates...
flight 104, a McDonnell Douglas MD-87 en route to Vienna International AirportVienna International AirportVienna International Airport , located in Schwechat and southeast of central Vienna, is the busiest and biggest airport in Austria. It is often referred to as Schwechat, the name of the county it is in. The airport is capable of handling wide-body aircraft such as the Boeing 747 and Airbus A340...
, was hijacked shortly after takeoff from Tegel Airport by a Bosnian male carrying a knife (which was small enough to be allowed on board under then valid safety regulations). The pilots were forced to return to Berlin, where the perpetrator was overpowered by German police forces.
- On 6 November 1997, an Air France Boeing 737–500 skidded off the runway while landing at Berlin Tegel due to a suspected brake defect. There were no injuries.
There were also two Cold war era incidents relating to an American and a British airliner that had departed Tegel on international non-scheduled passenger services. Both of these occurred in Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
n airspace. The former was a charter flight carrying German holidaymakers to the Bulgarian Black Sea coast
Bulgarian Black Sea Coast
The Bulgarian Black Sea Coast covers the entire eastern bound of Bulgaria stretching from the Romanian Black Sea resorts in the north to European Turkey in the south, along 378 km of coastline. White and golden sandy beaches occupy approximately 130 km of the 378 km long coast...
, the latter a migrant charter en route to Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
:
- On 28 May 1971, a Modern Air CV-990A with 45 passengers on board en route from Berlin Tegel to BulgariaBulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
was unexpectedly denied permission to enter Bulgarian airspace, as a result of a new policy adopted by that country's then communist government to deny any aircraft whose flight had originated or was going to terminate at a West Berlin airport the right to take off and land at any of its airports. This resulted in the aircraft having to turn back to Berlin, where it landed safely at the city's Tegel Airport.
- The same year, a Dan-Air Comet carrying TurkishTurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
migrant workers from Berlin Tegel to IstanbulIstanbulIstanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
was "escorted" by Bulgarian fighter planeFighter aircraftA fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat with other aircraft, as opposed to a bomber, which is designed primarily to attack ground targets...
s into SofiaSofiaSofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
. The crew flying the aircraft was attempting to take the shortest route to Istanbul when leaving YugoslavYugoslaviaYugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
airspace by entering Bulgarian airspace, instead of taking the longer route through GreekGreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
airspace. They were not aware of the then communist government of Bulgaria's decision not to let any aircraft enter its airspace whose flight had originated or was going to terminate at a West Berlin airport, without stopping en route at another airport outside West Berlin. The aircraft landed safely at Sofia. It was released along with its crew and passengers when the flight's commander paid the fine the Bulgarian authorities had imposed for violating their country's airspace with the company's credit card.
In addition to these Cold War incidents involving commercial passenger flights that had originated at Berlin Tegel, there was another serious incident on a Tegel-bound non-scheduled passenger flight. This incident, which occurred during the same period over West Germany, involved a British holiday jet carrying German tourists from Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
to West Berlin:
- On 17 August 1969, a Laker Airways BAC One-Eleven 320L (registration: G-AVBX) operating a charter flight from KlagenfurtKlagenfurt-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...
to Berlin Tegel under contract to West Berlin package holidayPackage holidayA package holiday or package tour consists of transport and accommodation advertised and sold together by a vendor known as a tour operator. Other services may be provided like a rental car, activities or outings during the holiday. Transport can be via charter airline to a foreign country...
company Flug-Union Berlin made an emergency landingEmergency landingAn emergency landing is a landing made by an aircraft in response to a crisis which either interferes with the operation of the aircraft or involves sudden medical emergencies necessitating diversion to the nearest airport.-Types of emergency landings:...
at Hanover Airport. The aircraft was 30 miles (48.3 km) from Hanover, when an electrical fire started in an aerial tuning unit in the forward cabin area behind the flightdeck. This filled the cabin with fumes and reduced visibility on the flightdeck to 18 inches (45.7 cm). Forward vision was nil. Using the emergency oxygen systemEmergency oxygen systemAircraft emergency oxygen systems are emergency equipment fitted to commercial aircraft, intended for use when the cabin pressurisation system has failed and the level of oxygen in the cabin atmosphere drops below a safe level...
, the captainPilot in commandThe pilot in command of an aircraft is the person aboard the aircraft who is ultimately responsible for its operation and safety during flight. This would be the "captain" in a typical two- or three-pilot flight crew, or "pilot" if there is only one certified and qualified pilot at the controls of...
began his emergency descent from FL 250 under radar guidance from Hanover air traffic controlAir traffic controlAir traffic control is a service provided by ground-based controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and in the air. The primary purpose of ATC systems worldwide is to separate aircraft to prevent collisions, to organize and expedite the flow of traffic, and to provide information and other...
(ATC), while the co-pilot depressurised the aircraft and attempted to open a side window to clear the smoke. The cabin crew were deprived of both their public address system and intercom with the flightdeck during the descent. Due to lack of time before landing, emergency procedures were abandoned. Following the successful emergency landing, the aircraft came to a rapid halt clear of the runway. By the time the last of the 89 occupants (five crew and 84 passengers) had evacuated the aircraft, the fire had burned through the pressure hull and was being fed by oxygen. There were no injuries. The fire was extinguished on the ground. Following the incident, the aircraft manufacturer issued several service bulletins (SBs) listing action to be taken as mandated by the UK's Airworthiness Requirements Board (ARB). These SBs were circulated to all One-Eleven operators. The ARB also issued a more general warning to all One-Eleven operators regarding the need to ensure that oxygen leaks do not create fire hazards, and that oxygen lines are routed away from potential fire sources. As a result of this incident, the ARB also began to pay close attention to the fire resistance of aircraft fittings and furnishings due to their potential to form major hazards in oxygen-fed inflight fires. The flightdeck crew subsequently received the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service in the AirQueen's Commendation for Valuable ServiceThe Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service is a British military award that recognises meritorious service during, or in support of, operations...
, while the cabin crew were commended for their action during the emergency. The citationAwardAn award is something given to a person or a group of people to recognize excellence in a certain field; a certificate of excellence. Awards are often signifiedby trophies, titles, certificates, commemorative plaques, medals, badges, pins, or ribbons...
for the Queen's Award stated that "the crew displayed a high standard of airmanshipAirmanshipAirmanship is skill and knowledge applied to aerial navigation, similar to seamanship in maritime navigation. Airmanship covers a broad range of desirable behaviors and abilities in an aviator...
in circumstances which could have had very serious consequences".