Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg (FBB), the operator of the long-delayed Berlin Brandenburg International airport, is getting set for a 31 October opening, revealed details about festivities and the first arriving jets. FBB says on 28 August that events celebrating the new airport’s initiation will last two weeks as traffic shifts from Berlin Tegel International airport, which has been the city’s primary airport since it opened in 1948. The highlight will be on 31 October,” FBB says. “On this day, Terminal 1 will begin operations. One aircraft each from EasyJet and Lufthansa will land simultaneously on parallel runways. On 8 November the airport in Tegel will receive an appropriate send off.” Tegel, located northwest of Berlin, has been the primary airfield for commercial passenger service to the German city for more than 70 years. During the country’s division between 1961 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Tegel along with Berlin-Tempelhof, in the city’s centre, serviced the western part of the divided city. Berlin-Schoenefeld airport, southeast of Berlin and the location of the new airport facility, had been the main field for former East Germany during the 29 years that the two Germanies were separate countries. After unification, most passengers travelling to Berlin passed through Tegel, while Schoenefeld continued to be used for connections to eastern Europe, charter flights as well as for general aviation and pilot training. Berlin Brandenburg airport will carry the ICAO code BER, and the renovated Schoenefeld terminal will be renamed “BER Terminal 5” on 25 October, FBB says. The final flight from Tegel will leave two weeks later. Berlin Brandenburg International airport has a long and troubled history. In 1996, the governments of Berlin and Brandenburg committed the site on the southeastern edge of the city as the location of the new capital’s airfield. Years of financial issues including a failed privatisation followed, and the cost of construction along with accompanying measures such as soundproofing nearby homes, skyrocketed. Design and building flaws as well as numerous management changes slowed completion, and just a few weeks before its planned commissioning in June 2012, a series of safety inspection failures prompted authorities to abruptly halt the airport’s opening. In early 2020, eight years after its proposed completion, the coronavirus pandemic threatened to derail the opening yet again. But FBB says its preparations are close to complete, and public testing of the facility is currently in full gear. Volunteers play the role of passengers in testing processes critical to the facility’s successful operation. Still, the sharp decline in passengers as a result of the global health emergency will leave a mark on the new airport. “Unfortunately we can’t reliably prognosticate the development of traffic in the coming years,” says FBB chief executive Engelbert Lutke Daldrup on 28 August, adding that additional financial challenges will require further subsidies “for years”. The airport’s “assumed additional financing” for 2020 of €300 million ($357 million) was slashed to €250 million ”due to drastic savings measures such as reduced working hours, a hiring freeze and budget cuts”, FBB says.

Source: Cirium

South African carrier Comair’s rescue practitioners have received a binding offer from the preferred investors for the company. As a result, the practitioners are seeking creditors’ consent for a further extension to the deadline to publish the business rescue plan for the operator. Comair, which operates as a British Airways franchise, has been immersed in the rescue process since May and its business plan had been due for publication on 28 August. But the company is looking to extend this deadline by a few days to 2 September. Its practitioners state that they have received a “final binding offer” and the terms of this offer must be incorporated into the plan. None of the potential investors has been identified. Comair had previously received signed offers, both binding and non-binding, in July but a number of conditions needed to be met before they could be fulfilled.

Source: Cirium

In a statement issued on 27 August, Cornish wrote that there had been "no evidence of any recognition from the government of the need to protect the travel industry and enable it to recover from what is undoubtedly the biggest crisis it has ever faced". Manchester Airports Group owns and operates three UK airports: London Stansted; Manchester; and East Midlands. At London Stansted, passenger numbers over the traditionally busy August bank holiday weekend are expected to be less than a third of the figure recorded last year, something Cornish partially attributes to the government's quarantine strategy. The UK Department for Transport lifted quarantine restrictions on more than 50 countries in early July and opened up "travel corridors" whereby arrivals from those nations would no longer need to self-isolate for 14 days. However, less than three weeks later the government suddenly reintroduced quarantine restrictions for arrivals from Spain, throwing travel plans into disarray during the peak holiday season. A couple of weeks later, France, the Netherlands, Malta, Monaco, Turks & Caicos and Aruba were also swiftly removed from the travel-corridor list. Similar last-minute action was taken two weeks later when Austria, Croatia and Trinidad & Tobago were taken off the safe list and Portugal was added back on. Cornish is calling on the government to take a more targeted, regionalised approach to quarantine based on areas of a country where Covid-19 cases are rising, rather than issuing blanket bans for entire countries. "It seems there is an acceptance within the Department for Transport and by the transport secretary himself that a regionalised approach is needed, but we find ourselves months down the line and no progress has been made," says Cornish. "Meanwhile, we have watched the penny drop with other major nations, such as Germany, which has moved quickly to enable travel to popular resorts in the likes of Spain, while adopting a localised, targeted approach to quarantine that the UK has so far refused to consider."Cirium approached the Department for Transport for comment.

Source: Cirium