This article whitewashes the hell out of this debacle under the aegis of "politicians messed it up." It is way worse than that. Go read the Wikipedia article; i

This article whitewashes the hell out of this debacle under the aegis of "politicians messed it up." It is way worse than that. Go read the Wikipedia article; it's very entertaining. BBC fails to mention details like: * The fire response system wasn't just broken; it was never built. Siemens (a small/medium sized contractor according to the article) is "still waiting for paperwork" to deliver the software for the smoke suction system, based on hardware which was never even designed. * The ventilation system turned out to be impossible. The architect didn't want ventilation ducts on top of the design for aesthetic reasons, so air was to be ducted and blown down, and out to vents on the airfield. Pushing warm air downwards many meters is generally not a trivial ask. * turns out the architect of the fire suppression system wasn't an architect, but only a draftsman. * The sand lime brick used in the foundations apparently necessesitatss replacing big chunks of foundation, cabling, and concrete. * The windows wouldn't open when the weather was above 30 degrees Celsius (about 80 fahrenheit). It's 36 in Berlin today. * 80% (!) of the doors just didn't work as of 2017. * For the opening in 2012, there were no ticket counters and the escalators did not work. * Three rounds of bribery and corruption charges in the project leadership * 5 different project chairpeople and presidents * By 2017, there were still major problems with smoke control, sprinklers, fire detection, sirens, emergency bulbs, and similar critical systems. * Big parts of the cable ducting was not waterproof, and now about 700km of cabling needs to be replaced. * 600 fire protection walls have to be replaced because they were made out of the wrong kind of concrete. * They had to halt construction at one point because the main roof was going to collapse due to structural issues. * The railway station serving the airport (built by Deutsche Bahn), and the tunnel to the airport (built by the airport construction company) were incompatible and had to be adjusted. * When they finally simulated a fire situation (2017) they discovered they needed way more water than was planned for the sprinkler systems... Which therefore needed to be replaced. The official scheduled opening date remains October 2020, but several official letters have called that info question. Certainly no one in Berlin expects it to open then. It has been delayed 10 times so far. This is not just bureaucratic bungling. This is incompetence, corruption, mismanagement, AND bungling. Anyone on HN who has a contracting background can tell you: no responsible or capable project management would touch this steaming dumpster fire at this point. It has more warning flags than cabling problems, and that's saying something. Really, read the Wikipedia section on "construction delays". It's very entertaining: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Brandenburg_Airport