Hearing "(General-) Aviation Structure in Berlin-Brandenburg"
24. 2. 2010
Today the German Luftfahrt-Presse-Club organised a hearing about the aviation structure in Berlin-Brandenburg and it’s development in context to the implementation of BBI. The General Managers of Schönhagen, Strausberg and Eberswalde-Finow Airports presented their airfields and described their roles in the overall aviation structure.
The referees agreed in the assessment of the ongoing segmentation in regional aviation. Since about one year it becomes obvious, that the General Aviation is not compatible with the profile of the developing international hub airport BBI in Schönefeld. It’s not a surprise for the aviation experts. The smaller regional airports Schönhagen and Strausberg took some benefit from the closure of Tempelhof and the suppression from Schönefeld. They are thinking about an enlargement of their facilities. Eberswalde-Finow, with a larger felt distance from Berlin and a profile quiet different from the other two important airports took less benefit from this situation and has still hangar space available. Anyway it had to be assumed, that a big portion of the General Aviation could not be relocated but simply disappeared from the region together with the economical activities they had been linked with.
Reinhard Wolk from Eberswalde-Finow presented the results of several European studies executed in the EUROPLANE project under the lead partnership of the State of Brandenburg in 2006. At that time already the conclusion from those studies was, that not only the General Aviation but also the “real low cost” sector does not find applicable bases at an international hub airport. Turnaround times, airport fees and services can not meet the requirements of point to point traffic operating without any transfer passengers or through checked baggage for example.
Consequently to these facts all over the world modern airport systems have been established consisting of more than only one airport in contradiction to the so called single airport concepts. Each of such airports runs under it’s own profile serving a certain aviation segment with optimal efficiency. Mr. Wolk presented impressive examples like the Milano system with Malpensa, Linate and Bergamo out of a study from UNICONSULT Hamburg. (available under downloads/links).