Berlin’s cold war-era Tegel Airport to close next month

Berlin’s Tegel airport can halt operations next month after the coronavirus virtually stopped traffic there, in what could spell the end for the Cold War-era facility.

Due to shutter for good in November, Tegel can temporarily close from June 15 after shareholders agreed that keeping it open isn’t economical, Eva Henkel, a spokeswoman for Berlin’s finance ministry, said Wednesday. Traffic plummeted by about 95% last month.

Flights will be handled instead at Schoenefeld to the south-east of the city until the long-delayed BER airport—located at the same site—opens at the end of October.

Tegel’s hexagon-shaped terminal was completed in the 1970s when Berlin was an island in a sea of communism. Designed for a fraction of the 36 million passengers it handled last year, the airport has been popular with travelers for its conveniently small size and proximity to the city center.

Critics say it’s cramped and out of date. Arrivals and departures are mostly handled on the same level, and there’s only rudimentary retail space and no rail connection to the center.

Tegel, which is named after German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, will be the second airport to close in Berlin in recent years after the 2008 shutdown of Tempelhof, the historic facility where Allied planes landed during the Berlin Airlift.

The Tegel site is due to be redeveloped into a technology park and university.