Arguably off topic, but having suffered through BER several times, I have a few tips to share which might reduce your own suffering.
First: post-security you will find some of the most disgusting food ever served in an airport, but hey it’s also expensive and the servers don’t hide how much they hate being there! However, there is a little shop near the left-side stairs that sells better alcohol as well as soft drinks, and various food including (last I checked) pretty decent sandwiches. Just get provisions there and have a seat near your gate.
Second: when the security lines are moving too slowly it’s often worth trying the faraway one, which is actually outside the main hall. It’s so insanely counterintuitive, it’s the last one to get backed up.
Third: on arrival you may want a train, and it’s not at all obvious what one goes where nor even which ticket you need. You can use a standard subway ticket with any train departing from the airport, and you can buy that ticket in advance with the BVG app. Oh, and the S-Bahn is probably not the train you want if you’re reading this comment. Just go to Hauptbahnhof and reorient from there, IMO.
I was just there over this weekend, they sold us those 9 eur train tickets saying you can use it for any train anywhere. Then we board the first train that Apple Maps suggested and the first thing we hear from the announcer "9 eur tickets are not valid on this train".
The 9 euro ticket is only for local and regional trains. However, you can just get about anywhere taking only local and regional trains, but it'll be a very long day.
I'm pretty sure any train from BER airport would be covered under the 9-euro ticket. The trains not covered under the ticket are primarily ICE (inter-city high speed) and anything operated by another company (e.g. FlixTrain).
Yes from BER, it was an IC, but we didn't actually need to go to another city, it just happened to stop near where we were going in Berlin and be the fastest way to get there (first option that navigation apps suggested).
Ended up fine, just got on some slower train that was fine for those tickets.
It was a nice option to have, because normally it seems we would've paid like 50 euros or something to get around for three days. But it was weird that the tickets reset on the 1st of the month, so we had to buy two of them because of unlucky timing.
How often do the ticket inspectors come in right after the airport stop? If it's relatively rare, you theoretically could ride that one stop without a ticket (but of course that would be totally illegal, do not do it).
I was there recently for a conference, didn't know about the 9eur ticket and got the 10eur 24 hour ticket for zone ABC on the machine. Anyway, forgot to stamp the ticket, of course. The controller didn't give us a fine but warned us to stamp it before we get to the central station.
I got fined once when leaving SXF, because my ticket purchase in the app went through 20 seconds after departure (I rushed into the leaving train while buying the ticket). So, yes, they do check as early as that.
I would add two more suggestions here:
1) If you have 50€ to spare always take the taxy to the city center. If you take the train you will hate this airport as much as the one at Frankfurt. You can thank me later.
2) Use security lanes 1 or 5. They are the furthest and less busy. Everyone usually just queues up by the nearest one. Don't trust the indicators.
I was so surprised going through security in Schiphol Airport recently. I swear there were 3000 people in line, but they have like 30 security checkpoints, and everyone goes in the same line (maybe one per terminal?), so we were through in 15 minutes.
It was amazing. I also never realized how much I appreciate everything in that airport being connected by corridors until I had to navigate CDG and it’s stupid trains and buses.
My brother just went through Schiphol two weeks ago. Scheduled his connecting flight with a five hour layover just to be sure. Took him 5 hours and 20 minutes to make it through security.
Schiphol is insane. I had the same thing happen to me a few months ago. Figured I’d go 5 hrs early just in case. Even without check bags I still missed my flight. I went 7 hrs early the next day and just made it due to departure delays. From what I heard they’re not letting people in until 5 hrs before their departure as the airport became too crowded.
I arrived in Heathrow yesterday 2.5 hours before my flight to a huge queue stretching outside the terminals into the parking lots. Mortifying to see. To my surprise I was past security in about an hour.
I was in that self same queue and also made it through surprisingly quick, only for my flight to Frankfurt being cancelled. Back at LHR now for round two.
The security staff was seriously underpaid and they got fed up with it. During COVID a lot of them switched to better paying careers.
It will take months for new staff to be hired and trained unfortunately.
$50 after walking off a $1200 flight, $60 upgrade to board early, and $12 in cocktails is not a substantial amount. Plus lunch/dinner on the way to/at the airport for $40. And you're gonna pay $8-12 to get downtown via public transit, then make a transfer to a bus and walk two blocks to your hotel. Fifty bucks for a taxi is a lot, but a rounding error on a transatlantic flight/trip, and will drop you off in front of the hotel, might even carry your bags into the lobby for you, or at least load them onto a luggage cart.
Yup, 50 € sounds like a lot of money for a few minutes saved (not to mention that it depends on the traffic situation if you will actually save some time). Of course, depending on where your hotel is and how many bags you have, a taxi may still be the better option...
After arriving in a new city is it very mentally relaxing not having to understand ticketing pricing, zones, best way to navigate, understanding the differences between different types of trains/trams/buses.
Especially since airport <-> city is almost always a separate system as well than intra-city transport.
3. is nice compared to most European cities, even the train to MUC is nearly 4x more expensive if I remember well.
And I've missed the last RE to HbF a few times (EasyJet being late often) but the last S-Bahn runs surprisingly late. Same in the morning, you can take the very first U-Bahn at the dawn of the day among drunk people going home, and do the last bit by bus. I never needed a taxi.
When I lived there, TXL was still operating, and showing up 3 minutes before the gate opened was an also interesting experience. But I understand people in the neighborhood being fed up it closed down 10 years late.
> First: post-security you will find some of the most disgusting food ever served in an airport, but hey it’s also expensive and the servers don’t hide how much they hate being there!
This also describes all 3 major NYC airports. I have to plan around it and bring food with me.
The food at terminal C at EWR post renovation is perfectly fine, if ridiculously expensive. Terminal A sucks though. Can't say anything about B, I've only used EWR for domestic travel.
I beg to differ. Compared to PDX, TPA, DEN, SAN, SEA and even SFO, I would say the updated Terminal C is still lacking, especially at those appalling prices. The whole OTG iPad thing is stupid too, and I assume leads back to corruption at Port Authority.
One of the decisions the Port of Portland made long ago that I really appreciate is that any chain restaurants at PDX (e.g. McMenamins) must charge the same menu prices as their non-airport locations.
I just landed in BER 20 minutes ago and I am just amazed how bad the signage is
The signs tiny and all in the same red/white color. The monitors tiny and sparse.
The placement of the tickets for the trains placed where you do not pass. And just good luck if you go down the wrong stairway and then reached the nowhere, without any visible signs.
They cared about the CI way more than about fast passenger throughput.
If you listen to the podcast they explain that it wasn't his fault.
Spoilers: he designed BER for fast passenger transit, just like Tegel, but the airport authorities wanted more shopping space. So they crammed as many shops as they could in detriment of the passenger experience. And then there's the situation with the rise of low-cost airlines who weren't allowed to use the jetway...
I definitely recommend listening to the whole series. It's really well done and a must-listen for anyone with interest in project management.
This glosses over some stuff that is definitely his fault.
The first issue that caused the issues, the fire system, was designed to suck air underground, because the architect did not want a fire system to obstruct his roof, never mind that smoke and hot air naturally rise. https://www.thegermanreview.de/p/the-real-story-behind-berli...
Maybe half-invented, but I read an architect's memoirs some years ago and he was saying how around the 1940s there were often cases when he and his chief-architect/supervisor at the time were actually chased out (like, physically) from the construction sites whenever they were coming in to add/make some changes that the constructor was considering as being too over the top/unrealistic. We need for that attitude to come back, at least in a metaphorical way, otherwise we'll continue being stuck with projects like this one.
Why would you chase the architect with his insane ideas away when you're getting paid by the hour and the project must be completed at some point because there's no alternative for the government? Unfortunately nobody appears to come off as not corrupt or idiotic in some way in this story.
Because most workers, even though they get paid by the hour, actually want to see the job done. Plenty of people want to do a good job, so when they see someone coming in and adding to the workload to make the job worse they’ll, naturally, tell them to piss off.
Even by the claims of your article, it doesn't sound really like it was his fault. The system was designed to a specification, whether or not the architect was given too much free reign is entirely on the board.
If you hire a design team to create a car with a massive hole where the engine and wheels should be, because it is more "clean", and then neglect to hire an engineer to check their work is feasible, is it on the design team or on you being incompetent?
You can say all you want "hot air naturally rises", true, but I doubt an architect has the training to be a safety engineer, and before you say "oh well that's obvious", consider that heavy objects naturally fall to the earth, and yet we have airplanes.
They had a design which would work, but nobody in charge actually did the legwork of bothering to check if it was feasible or not, and/or bungled it so badly even if it were feasible it was like attaching a helicopter to an airplane and then wondering why it didn't fly...
The whole not using the jetway thing in Germany blows my mind. I flew Lufthansa SEA-FRA in 2019, and the fully packed 747 had to walk onto the ramp, and load up into buses to get to the terminal. Outrageous. The only time I've ever done that in NA is flying at places like CAK in a micro regional jet.
LCCs generally do this because charges for the apron are cheaper than the jetway.
With Lufthansa, I'd assume that FRA is super busy and didn't actually have a gate available at the time; a 747 is a really large aircraft to load using buses.
Apron buses are very common in large airports and I always found it really efficient. From memory I’ve used them at Haneda, Narita and KL. Perhaps the ones in Germany are just altered metro buses though, which would be terrible. Apron buses are efficient due to being low to the ground, having very wide doors to accomodate quick loading and unloading, typically no seats.
They may be efficient given the layout of the airport (which can't be changed), but if you are to design a new airport, you cannot beat the efficiency of jetways. Hundreds of people just walking down the hallway.
European low-cost airlines are terrible. They do everything they can to lower the fees they pay. That often involves skipping major airports, unless they can negotiate a cheap enough deal with the airport. Those deals tend to involve things that make the passenger experience worse, because the airports don't want normal airlines to choose the same deal.
If you choose a normal airline and fly to any reasonably big airport that's not overcrowded, you'll get a jetway outside exceptional situations.
A decent new airport or significant airport reconstruction costs probably $5B+ (DEN cost $4.8B in the 90s; Beijing Daxing cost $11.5B) In austerity-minded Europe there really isn’t money for this. Even if there was, NIMBYs and green campaigners mean there is very little appetite to pursue it politically.
It's something that might trip people up, but due to West/East Germany split and Interflug going under after unification, Berlin airports are peripheral - leaves in flight graph, not hubs except for low cost airlines. Lufthansa continues to use Munich and Frankfurt as hubs.
what? Tegel was the best airport ever, you could literally be there 20min before check-in and still get your plane. Nowadays I have to arrive 3-4hrs before, tegel was a blessing a true king of all airports, all hail tegel
Unless there was a crazy line that day to that single security spot and you had to jump the line or risk getting late for your plane.
I flew through Tegel a dosen times and it was a horrible experience each time. Not sure which was worse - the old terminal, or the new barrack added on to the first one.
Also, I've seen multiple airports that allowed you to be 20 min before boarding and still get through. On Warsaw Chopin, which is 2x bigger than Tagel, I can arrive 10 min before boarding and still make it on time. With most airports the size of Tagel as well.
Having said all that - the architecture was nice indeed, and I'm sure it was very functional when it was built and there was 4x less traffic, planes were 30% smaller and the security was way lighter.
It was… not great if you were coming from outside Schengen. I was there maybe three times, coming from Dublin; twice, only one of the passport desks was staffed (they also had the machines, but I never saw them in working order). Both times, of course, someone ahead of me in the queue had some problem, and it took an hour to get through passport control. Never seen this at any other airport.
Schonefeld was better, though getting there involved taking Ryanair…
Schönefeld definitely won the award for most disgusting airport bathrooms in western EU, and most kafka-esque narrow winding hallways that may or may not be taking you where you want to go.
I loved Tegel - mostly used the parking structure-turned-into-terminal barracks thing though.
Fast in and out, even with the X10 bus connection.
The main terminal was weirdly narrow on airside, but from memory apart from having to stand to drink beer was just fine.
I liked the currywurst carriage outside by departures if I was ever more than 30 minutes early for my flight.
Schönefeld on the other hand … grr. I argue that that airport was exceptionally poor in a way I’ve never experienced outside of corporate airports used for industrial and mining facilities.
This is true many places, although I tend to show with a tighter timetable myself.
But it's so absurd, so silly. It's actually faster to drive from Ottawa to Toronto(4 to 5 hr drive) than take a plane, and cheaper.. even with current fuel costs, too.
Wait until you find out about this amazing invention called the train. You can take them at the city center, you stop at the city center, no waiting times, faster, safer and cheaper than driving...
In all seriousness though, any country serious about climate change should ban short-haul flights.
Yet before we get into that, you should realise what you've done. This whole thread was just about how sad these exessive delays are.
Now I have no problem with diverging threads, my initial comment did just that!
However, you're definitely talking about "where you think we should be" vs "right now".
And right now, you're saying all short hop flights should be banned.
Yet as many have indicated here, that is just not feasable in some cases. Even if you believe rail is always better (it isn't, not for all flights compared to all rail), you actually need rail before banning short hops.
And as others have indicated, loads of people driving, instead of short prop plane hops, is worse than that plane ride by far!
Is your goal to harm the environment? If not, then "just ban it" isn't sensible. You need to plan first.
And really, just ban it means you support just banning all cars, the concept is the same, yet this is literally impossible for many, many reasons.
For example, banning all cars would mean an end to rural livability, and a further exodus from rural Canada.
Canada, whos crops and meat feed massive parts of the world.
Are you planning to force people to farm? Make them stay, and work, if they are entirely isolated without cars?
Of not that, then is your goal to cause world wars, and death, and destruction, and likely the release of tailored plagues, and nuclear weapons?
Because in a world pf starvarion, the knives come out very fast and strong.
Yet this is what wide sweeping car bans could mean, as it is already hard to keep farms manned, and profitable, without banning things from a city centric view.
Would you also ban short hops for prop planes, from rural areas too?
It would be a disaster to put trains everywhere. Literallly bad for the environment, to run a rail line for 50 people a day. A prop plane is far, far more energy efficient, than maintaining all that rail infrastructure for so few people, through hundreds of km of forest.
Just the regular chainsaw usage alone, to prune back trees, makes it worse.
What are you thinking?? Hurting the environment like this, suggesting policies which end in plague, nuclear war, death, destruction!!
The connection is more direct for them, but some say that all we did, with environmental targets and oil, was to outsource it all to crazy Putin.
He now uses that cash to slaughter and kill. And may yet, as a result, bring about a world war.
That is a real, direct outcome of a positive environmental policy(reduce production), causing mayhem, death, destruction.
Of course, bad things often happen regardless. I admit to this, yet, I feel short sightedness got us into these environmental issues, and trying to get us out must not make the same mistake.
You're doubling down on the Chewbacca defense, please stop.
No one is saying that we should "reduce production". Of course, any ban on short-haul flight could only be enacted after there was a better/cheaper infrastructure available.
And it so happens that for a lot of cases, the infrastructure exists, it is mostly a matter of ending up with subsidizes and ensuring that government policy accounts for all externalities. For North America, even if proper rail does not exist yet, intercity buses usually are a feasible alternative, and they also have no-to-little waiting times, they can also drop passengers at the city center and are more fuel-efficient per person than flying or driving solo.
It makes no sense to have flights between Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, much like it makes no sense to have flights between Boston/NYC, LA/SF/Las Vegas, Seattle/Vancouver. And this is just off the top of my head.
It makes sense time wise, flights are much, much faster.
So to realistically do this, you need fast and cheap rail. No one is going to take rail, which stops at 10+ stops, and takes 7 hours for the trip.
Right now, Ottawa->Toronto isn't too bad, compared to car. Schedule says 4 1/2 to 5 hours.
Yet, you have to get to the rail station, and get from the rail station at each end.
Were I to visit my uncle in Toronto, this means a 30 minute drive to the station, and a cab to my uncle's house, another 30+ minutes.
A car removes some of this, and removes the waiting at each end. And if you drive, you don't need to rent a car, it is more convenient at the other end.
So to compete realistically, to get many people who would drive, to use the train, you need incentive. Not punishment, incentive.
So high speed rail would be good here.
This means loads of infrastructure must be build, which means you must ensure success. This means it has better not be more expensive than a car, and if you and your wife, or family are travelling, this means 10 bucks, maybe 20 per person.
Otherwise a car is far, far cheaper. Current ticket costs are silly.
Now I agree, train is better than car. But is train better than car, or plane, if it costs a gazillion to build, and maintain, and it is barely used?
And yet you're also talking about Seattle/Vancouver, in comparison to SF/LA or Vegas, where the plane is much, much faster than rail or car. So much faster.
So it has better really be fast rail here.
Yet have you looked at the fuel efficiency of fast rail? It is not as good as you think.
And the bus! Let's replace a personal car, with a hot, smelly, loud, uncomfortable bus which most people hate.
You.must be joking.
If you think the only metrix is the environment, you will 100% fail at enacting change.
I will give you another counter example here.
Dams.
For the longest time, environmentalists complained about dams. Lost habitat, they said. And yes, it is true!
Yet compared to anything, anything at all, a dam is best for the environment. Better than nuclear, solar, wind, anything!
And it is is not as if the environment is destroyed, just altered. Some animals go away, to be replaced by different wildlife.
For god sakes, beavers make lakes and dams which can be seen from space!
It is another example of short sightedness. We must enact change in a way that it takes hold, and desired.
Not if takes at least 45 minutes to get to the airport, plus 1-2 hours waiting to board, plus 20-30 minutes to leave the plane and yet another 45 minutes to get to your destination. The 1-hour flight just became a 4-5 hour journey, full of stress and discomfort.
> I will give you another counter example here. Dams.
That's the third strike at Chewbacca defense. I'm really done here.
The tracks to Ottawa and Montreal are getting updated. The problem is that Via only owns a small portion of the route and is at the mercies of freight traffic. The new dedicated tracks will solve this. Still not high speed though.
Agere, the train station location in most cities is more convenient than the aurport, although not as good as my experiences in Europe. If you want a good laugh of how to do it wrong, look up 'saskatoon train station' on maps.
It's about 450km, which is between 4 and 5 hours, traffic at each city depending..
A propeller plane shines here. If boarding is quick, and there is no customs as it is in country, and you just carry on? You save time, and it's better than 20 to 50 people driving independantly.
A plane can also fly straight too, so it can take even 1/3 of the time to get there.
OP likely meant that it is a very sad thing for the environment that we (as a society) privilege air travel instead of train travel for such a short distance and where there’s no need to cross a border.
The train brings you in the middle of both city center, directly integrated with transit, you can show up about 10 min before your departure, etc. It’s just the actual rail that is the problem.
Mmm, maybe. Average occupancy of buses is usually only around 40%, which probably pushes them above the per-passenger emissions of a modern aircraft, and being typically diesels, they have other emissions than CO2 to worry about.
On a personal note, I also hate bus travel with a passion — it's mind-numbingly slow, you have limited ability to move around, it's sometimes too cramped to work, when toilets are available they're tiny and awful, etc. I love train travel and will use trains whenever available, sometimes even for multi-day journeys, but I will take significant detours or even rearrange travel plans to avoid a bus.
I agree that buses are cramped and that trains are way more comfortable, but I think we can also agree that whatever space you don't have in a bus, it will be even worse on a plane...
Also, let's not forget that the experience of traveling by bus got worse mostly because of the popularization of low-cost short-haul flights, and that has killed the market for "premium" bus traveling. If short-haul flights were out of the picture, I wouldn't be surprised if someone started offering bus travel with larger seats (in 2-1 configuration) and even more sleeper buses for night travels [0]
> I agree that buses are cramped and that trains are way more comfortable, but I think we can also agree that whatever space you don't have in a bus, it will be even worse on a plane...
Depends which class you travel, and with which airline. Even in economy, the "legacy" European carriers are generally more comfortable than a bus. The ability to pay more to make the travel bearable is an advantage of air travel.
> Also, let's not forget that the experience of traveling by bus got worse mostly because of the popularization of low-cost short-haul flights, and that has killed the market for "premium" bus traveling. If short-haul flights were out of the picture, I wouldn't be surprised if someone started offering bus travel with larger seats (in 2-1 configuration) and even more sleeper buses for night travels.
You're right that air travel has made premium buses moot, but I think that's a good thing. Spending 12+ hours on a bus is not an improvement over a 2 hour flight, even if you have a bed on the bus. You can spend the night in your own bed and then get to the destination at the same time, having slept better and with less risk of accidental injury. The emissions gap between the two modes is narrowing rapidly, too.
> Spending 12+ hours on a bus is not an improvement over a 2 hour flight
My argument is that there is no such thing as a 2-hour flight. We still need to factor the time to get to the airport, check-in/boarding, getting off the plane, waiting for luggage, and then getting from the airport to your actual destination. That easily transforms any trip into a 5- or 6-hour event.
Factor in that if you are flying to a place where you need a hotel to "sleep on your own bed", suddenly even a very luxurious night bus might come out ahead in price and practicality.
Granted, for an European context it makes a lot less sense to talk about intercity bus because we have a reasonably extensive rail network. But put your hate of buses aside for a moment and consider that buses can be better, so from a North American perspective it can make sense to consider it.
Yeah, I guess if cost is an important factor, trains are not available, and the airports are both sides are on the distant/large/inefficient side, then the bus could marginally make sense. That's not a combination of factors I've encountered in recent memory though (but I don't go to North America much), and it's so marginal that I think every time I'd go for the increased comfort of not being on a bus (no matter how "luxurious") for 12+ hours.
Usually, most small flights of that type are connections onward. It's usually good for passengers because all other things being equal the security procedures at smaller airports, the traffic etc. is a lot less bad.
Trains still should be the alternative for these cases. The only exception I can think of where short-haul flights could be accepted is from small islands that need connection to a larger city inland.
I flew through the new Berlin airport 2 times this week, and had no issues going through security and to the gates. That 3-4hrs in your case seems absurdly long - were there crazy lines at the checkin or sth?
The worst for security that I've ever experienced was Amsterdam Schiphol. Absolute chaos at land side security and Americans on American airlines get extra inspection. When I was there they did the extra screening at the gate, but they've gone back and forth a bunch on where that's supposed to happen.
Tegel OTOH was super quick albeit poorly connected to the rest of Berlin.
At airports that do this I find it’s more common when US TSA adopts a rule first that people don’t want to subject all air passengers to. It was really common to have gate lines back when the US introduced that 3 oz bottle max.
The situation at AMS is that they kowtowed to the American government. The extra security doesn't apply to anyone flying a non-American airline (e.g. KLM) just Americans on American airlines flying to America. Used to be you'd have to go wander to a secondary screening station but when I flew through in 2019 they just pulled you out of line at the gate. I've not seen another airport that does this (in Europe or elsewhere).
Interestingly, Tegel (old terminal) is my favourite airport of all times due to the unmatched efficiency. It wasn't beautiful but it required a fraction of time compared to anything else.
Airports make 2/3rds of their money by renting space to shops, and the remaining third by allowing planes to fly. They have a strong incentive to be inefficient, so you will feel you need to arrive 2 hours before departure, or even more, because you don't want to risk losing your flight.
I flew ~1,000 times, and saw ~300 airports. I could write tens of books on how to make airports better... But the problem is that the incentives are such that this is not the way to go. Airports want to make money by selling you stuff. Period. They don't care about giving you a great experience.
Seems dubious. I would expect doubling the amount of throughput would bring more shop revenue than doubling the waiting time of people in the airport. I can only buy so many slices of pizza.
I remember reading a book a while back that mentioned that the luxury shops in airports don't make any money and don't expect to make sales. They're there to make you see Armani handbags for $2500 and think 'Wow, Armani must be a really luxury brand to have $2500 handbags on sale!'.
This then makes you more likely to later buy an Armani t-shirt for $80.
The store in the airport is there to make you think the brand is glamorous, to convince you of its mystique, not to sell things.
Say you arrive by taxi, you would go down the street in the middle, drop off at one of the four check-in areas (the triangular structures), then make your way through check-in and security and you're almost at your plane. The train station is below this structure and in the centre.
This opened in 1992 - Terminal 2, built later, uses a different approach with more shopping etc. along the way =)
This concept was much better in Tegel, not Munich. Interestingly the very same architect then was hired to plan BER, and was then instructed to deoptimize the traveller experience. He resigned in disgust, I think.
Terrible is relative. Never been to BER, but FRA is far better than similar-sized European/US airports like LHR or LAX (though a far cry from best like Changi, Chek Lap Kok or Dubai), and the smaller international airports like STR or FKB are quick to traverse and comparatively easy to access.
In my experience living in the most important city in the world the Berlin and Munich airports are a marvel of efficiency and comfort that I would kill to have back home.
Easy: political corruption masquerading as incompetence and bad luck, since our leaders have absolutely zero accountability, so they have no incentive to actually do anything right and can instead represent the interests of various businesses and interest groups using your tax money, and once their political career is over, they can get on the payroll as execs or consultants by the same business they helped get rich using taxpayer money.
Maybe technology, and a little behavioral modification, can help. For example, you can make an agreement with yourself: along with any online statement about endemic corruption, bad luck, lack of accountability, I will do something to reverse this trend I do not like. I will post the names of the politicians, businesses, consultants, responsible for a specific bad outcome. I think that would both strengthen your message and make you feel less helpless.
On a meta-level I'd also be very interested, how many people actually now about corruption of the smallest governing body where they live (and can name some members which got voted in). Given the fleeting lifestyle propagated here and by American laws (hey, there's another job, let's move), it's no wonder the government is captured by landed elites. It's the peoples job to change that and yes, settling down somewhere helps.
Yep. This is Germany, especially in the East, I've been dismayed to find. The destruction of the "sober and efficient" branding can't come soon enough.
I am not sure Germany really has represented that for a long time. I would never buy a German appliance, Vehicle or product made in the past 10 years. My impression of Germany can be summed up as: sold out to China, overpriced, stuffy, poor quality, and poor customer care. I’d rather buy Korean, Japanese, Swedish, but I’d even take American or Turkish over German these days.
The new LGA terminal is probably a lesson in how not to fuck up an airport. It's beautiful. You'll notice design decisions that take into consideration the post 9/11 security setup: lots of security lines and automation to help move you along. It dawns on you that every airport in USA had to retrofit today's security setup in a space that previously never had it or is too small to create a good people flow.
Security lines can make or break airports imo. LAX is nice because there are so many of them so they never get as absurd like they do at say DEN. Another perk to LAX is how fast you can get to and from your gate. It feels like 7 smaller airports wired in series versus some hulking ginormous beast. You can get off your flight and have your bag in hand in 10 minutes at LAX. At DEN you are waiting on a tram to get to baggage and I've gotten lost trying to find my correct carousel at that airport. It's basically impossible to get lost on the way to your bags at lax otoh, because once again 7 smaller airport effect in action means the baggage carousel is not a far walk from your gate.
For anyone with a Passing interest in civil engineering, I highly recommend watching this presentation about the LGA redesign from one of the lead architects: https://youtu.be/Kil-slXgVys
That was really good, thanks for sharing. Answered my questions on the deliberateness of all the design decisions I noticed and even the ones I didn't... Which is probably what makes for a good design.
Best way: close the actual city airport that was functioning like a well-oiled machine and was loved by the city population. Even better, do it against their explicit wishes with a shady decision that reeks of corruption.
Any follow-up to that will always end up being "fucked up".
I mean, sort of. The A gates which all had the separate security for each gate worked great. You could rock up 25 mins before your BA flight and just cruise right onto the plane.
That stopped there though, did you ever fly from B or C? Tolerable enough if you're catching a commuter to Munich or something at 7am, but once it's filled with tourists it was appalling, far too small, far too crowded.
Living in the west of the city, I'm quite happy having the airport moved further away for noise reasons though :}
At least my experience visiting Berlin, A was a bit of a nightmare to fly non-Schengen from. Totally disorganized since having only security in the little gate area was already a tight fit.
Tegel was only well functioning for inner-EU flights. Every time I had to fly to Israel via either Tegel or Schönefeld it was a huge hassle that required going through some obviously-late-addition terminal somewhere far and inconvenient.
BER was also a shitshow but the old airports badly needed replacement. I’ve flown through BER 3 times so far and all of them went fine and much more convenient than the old ones (with the exception of inner EU trips which I anyway prefer to do via train instead when possible).
I thought Tegel was notoriously the very worst airport in the world? The facilities were atrocious. A security setup like cattle pens. It was like a bad bus stop - grim and dark and raw concrete. It didn’t even particularly have good routes did it?
I used to fly between London and Berlin a lot, and absolutely loved Tegel then. LCY-TXL was a great route. From my apartment to sitting on the plane at LCY took 20 min; from my desk in Berlin to sitting on the plane at TXL took 40 min. Probably the best two airport experiences I've ever had.
LCY seems to have gone to the dogs recently too. I like the redevelopment they’ve done on airside, but it’s all so … full and unpleasant now.
Food options seem to have gone downhill now that the ok airside restaurant only does burgers. I’ve had delightful meals there in the past, making delays more than bearable.
The facilities were atrocious looking, grim and raw concrete on the outside, nonetheless it was very easy to fly through TXL and get to the city.
I always preferred going to TXL from ARN, felt like I was getting a flying bus to my destination, very close to the center so it was a matter of disembarking and getting to the center in 30 minutes or less. Flying to Schönefeld had the same atrocious facilities and another hour of a train ride to the city...
People who grew up in Berlin tend to have become enamored a bit with Tegel. I moved to Berlin later and always hated Tegel (though never as much as I've hated Schönefeld which was a kafkaesque nightmare).
It's true that Tegel was conveniently located and that boarding could be quite fast in terminal A. But if your flight got delayed after you were through security you would be stuck in a crammed space and your only opportunities for food would be overpriced Pretzels. And the whole thing was just outrageously ugly.
Yeah terminal A was quick and easy if everything went perfectly. If security ever got backed up, as happened often with flights to the US, you'd have long lines spilling into the main circular hall. More amusingly, the lack of table space on which to unpack your computer/toiletries/etc resulted in people hurriedly extracting possessions in an awkward crouch and then clutching the unwieldy bundles to their chest while waiting their turn. Quite a spectacle.
> You can’t possibly mean Tegel? I’ve never met anyone who has used Tegel who didn’t think it was clearly the worst airport in the world.
I've frequently used TXL and it was actually my favorite. However, I can see why at least some people hated it. While A-gates boardings were very fast (for which reason, I personally used to find it very convenient), they were also very crammed, which surely bothered a lot of people.
The experience of A<>C was very different. I didn't have a particular bad memory of C, but it didn't have services, which can be annoying when there's lots to wait.
It was also convenient for a two-legs connection (since one typically had to take a metro, then the bus), since the second leg (bus) was short. But again, some people may frown upon anything that is not directly connected like Heathrow.
I liked Tegel as well, but it's too small for a busy capital. It's nice that Heathrow has the tube right at the one terminal but there's still way too much walking involved. The worst, IMO, by far was Madrid. It took me about 40 minutes of walking to get from the metro to the gate.
I loved how compact Tegel terminal A was, it was like London City Airport rolled into a ring. The other terminals I used (I never bothered memorising which ones) were generic and forgettable.
Unless it should turn out that not every type of business in the world is like every other type, and there are significant enough differences in some branch of a business that you might structure your business based on airport options.
Why? Invited to a conference in Barlin? Hmm no thanks really can’t be bothered with the airports. Conference in Frankfurt? Yeah no problem airport is easy.
Tegel was great but operating well beyond design capacity and it showed. It was always super crowded, and there is no good public transit to it (the busses to Alex don't count).
> close the actual city airport that was functioning like a well-oiled
You mean which Berlin's airport? As Berlin-native for few years I used the Schönefeld numerous times... and the staff there was some mixture of rude primitive sadists. Behaving towards passengers as if they're taking revenge for something. I just want to fly out of here, you cunt.
Too many too important entities invested in real estate on the Tempelhof's approach routes to keep it operating. Now the very area of Tempelhof is pure goldmine. Tegel is next.
BER works just fine, if the problems get resolved. The last time, i got picked up by someone. Walked a little, stepped outside, into the car, and out of the airport area. Done.
It was in need for a big renovation itself and the whole of north Berlin will disagree with your statement. Since its closed, every place, flat/house and especially parks/lakes etc. are so much more livable. Having the airport for a city of this size a little outside of the city and not the outer part of the city centre is very reasonable in my opinion.
One other thing is how they were lying about progress. We had tickets to land on the new airport in 2013! The shops had ordered their inventory, bus companies and taxi companies had purchased new vehicles, and the mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit acted as if completions was still on schedule. What an absolute desaster.
On the bright side, as long as the BER could not open, the international aviation show ILA was absolutely amazing, because they were able to use the infrastructure without having to care for ongoing air traffic.
Frankfurt airport is marginally better. Flights stop in the middle of the runway. Take a bus. Buses are late. Walk for what feels like eternity. No regard for accessibility. I’ve met multiple senior citizens frail, waiting for their wheel chairs and worried that they’re going to miss their connecting flights.
As good as German engineering is, the airport infra is equally worse.
It’s a shame. I like flying lufthansa. They have the shortest flight times to Asia from the west coast.
Heathrow terminal 5 (almost exclusively BA/OneWorld) is on average the nicest hub terminal I've regularly been to. It's busy but once you've explored you'll know the quiet corners. Buses to the aircraft are rare. Security seems busy but fast. Baggage is a decent walk but I'm almost always connecting so don't need to go there. A London underground station going directly into the middle of the city. Food expensive but not Schipol or Frankfurt expensive (£4-5 for a decent sandwich instead of €10).
I did initially assume that, but then it doesn't make any sense at all. Lufthansa doesn't fly between the US West Coast and Asia except via Europe, and a large number of other airlines offer direct routes between the US West Coast and Asia which are obviously going to be substantially shorter. So... maybe they mean the west coast of some other country?
This is exactly it. I fly to India. SEA to FRA to India is the general route. Lufthansa has the shortest flight times including the layover in Frankfurt.
Every other airline takes at least a couple of hours more. Some take 4+ hours longer.
This seems impossible. Frankfurt is nowhere near the great circle route (shortest path) between Seattle and India, and Qatar flies directly from Seattle to Doha, which is near the route, and which itself has frequent direct flights to many airports in India.
And indeed, a quick flight search shows that Qatar's total flight times from Seattle to major Indian airports are all at least 2 hours shorter than Lufthansa's.
Pull a fire alarm. Sneak through security or run past the TSA agent falling asleep near the exit of the secured area. Try to open one of those secured doors marked "alarm will sound". There's lots of ways.
Note: This is not actual advice. Not responsible for any resulting fines or prison sentences.
2. Check-in luggage with a raspberry pi inside with a bunch of electronics coming out of it and two powered 8 segment displays.
3. Do not board any of those planes.
All those planes will be delayed while they remove your checked luggage from the hold since nowadays planes don't take-off with luggage if the traveller doesn't also board. With all planes delayed you can probably choke the runways and delay all departures.
A few decades ago, when my boss (senior exec at major US airline) was negotiating to be a part of Denver International Airport - he wrote in legalese requiring Denver Stapleton airport to be shutdown. He expected DIA to have tons of problems which it did, but killing Stapleton kept DIA on track.
Couple of anecdotes - the baggage handling design (I saw the revised version) was shuttling suitcases easily above 25 miles/hour and the architects had them drop through chutes at such high speeds
Much later, with the youtube era, I came across the various conspiracies on DIA. Good for a bored late night browsing
I moved to Denver a couple of years after DIA opened. I _hate_ DIA, it's an awful airport. The stupid train. The insane security lines. Baggage takes forever to come out. AUS? Great airport. PDX is a dream. SBA is my absolute favorite, like taking a trip back to the 1960s, walk off the ramp, pick up your bags from the pile they drop off. PHL? Yeah it's dirty and everything's broken, but still it's more efficient than DEN. EWR is expensive, DFW is too much sprawl, still... I hate DEN the most.
I read an analysis of the baggage system about a year after DIA opened, and it was fascinating as a young engineer. Essentially, the original system could never work. Airlines schedule in clusters - they try to make groups of flights arrive in groups and depart in groups, this allows them to create connecting flights. But the DIA system couldn't handle spiky traffic loads, even though this is how airlines design their schedules.
The ridiculous roof had leaks for years.
The current round of modifications and renovations (on a 25 year old airport, they want to renovate?) have been going on more than 2 years, gone over budget, they've already fired the lead contractor once, from what I can tell they're a long way from completion. When I read that part of Berlin's issue was that they wanted more retail, I think this is why they're renovating, they're not trying to create a better traveling experience, they're trying to create a better shopping experience.
They added a Westin onto the end of the terminal, the rates to stay there are absolutely insane. For the life of me, I can't understand why you'd stay out at the airport, when you're a train ride away from downtown.
I'm sure that DIA is the result of a bunch of corruption (Denver is underrated for the corruption here), and I feel like the conspiracy theories are some weird outgrowth of the corruption in the city government here, like some bacteria bloom that pops up around a sewage plume.
This podcast is outdated, right? It talks about the Brandenburg airport as if it had not finished. The deeply troubled airport is in fact open and in full service since 2020.
It’s in fact not finished. If you go to the website you will find out they have only opened three of the five terminals. They took the old neighboring airport and have temporarily named that “Terminal 5.”
I was just there on Friday and it was amazing how unfinished things are. Panels missing, no seating near some gates.
It’s a very nice mall that happens to have airplane gates.
Really though, the airport’s homepage sells it the best.
> Shopping Therapy at Berlin Airport
Both Terminals 1 and 5 (Terminal 2 is not operational yet) offer a “shopping heaven”, large shopping areas where you can find whatever you may look for. Last-minute presents, famous brands, local stores, BER airport has all the answers depending on your desires! Are you travelling on a budget and want to avoid unnecessary expenses? Take a walk and go for window shopping. Still a pleasing and relaxing experience!
What surprised me, given it's meant to be a shopping heaven, is how few food shops there are. At BER to get food we had to queue for a long time because every single food shop (there were only ~4-~5) had giant queues and there were nowhere near enough seats. Large areas remained panelled off. It seems like they struggled to get enough shops. The food places that did exist were real basic e.g. one was a currywurst shop.
Step 1 is not necessarily the worst idea, but it depends on you hiring competent people and managers (and it sounds like everything that followed was a result of this failure.)
At least the initial hiring of consultants was done publicly. (Subcontracting is usually not done via public tender, since it is assumed that the main contractor's bid includes the complexity and cost of whatever subcontractors they might need, and requiring public tender for everything would slow things down significantly.)
The problem was that actually following the advice to keep minimal in-house staff who could check the work was really stupid, no matter who would win such tenders.
This was posted twice already here, the oldest copy is from 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19765193 - wasn't able to find a date for the podcast itself but maybe it would be better to put [201?] in the title?
There are some well designed airports in Asia (multiple countries).
In USA, I personally felt SEA (Seattle-Tacoma) and DFW (Dallas/Fort-Worth) were rather good.
LAX is a mess for domestic/international transfers, with remote terminals and having to go though multiple buses right through the middle of planes on tarmac. However, I've gone through LAX many times that I now know my way around.
LAX was also the airport where I physically spotted the plane I had to board, and then figured out how to reach there by going in the general direction (because if you started your journey at a smaller airport and is changing planes at LAX, the original boaring pass you received may not have the gate written on it).
I've never transferred through lax but I don't mind flying into and out of it. From that perspective its pretty good. 7 terminals distributes security lines well enough to never be that crowded when I go at least. Your gate is then a 10 min walk at most from security at your terminal. On the arrivals side, you hop off the plane and baggage claim is again a 10 minute walk away, usually my bag is already on the conveyer when I come to it. It's a farcry from the song and dance you have to do at airports like denver. It feels like its 7 small airports wired up in series. I can see how that could screw you if your transfer is between different airlines perhaps though.
You really want to fuck up an airport? Do the following, in no particular order.
1. Spoof GPS, as in emulate the constellation. Randomize it every few minutes. Move transmitter around.
2. Plain old jam GPS. You can buy cheap and nasty GPS jammers. If you're good with electronics, hook em up to a 555 timer and trigger to prevent a lock but like 5% duty cycle.
3. Spoof ADS-B to create thousands or 10's of thousands of planes in airspace. Most systems will die from not enough ram to handle these. If they do survive, then they'll get alerts from everything everywhere.
4. Jam ADS-B. Not as terrible, but still bad.
5. Build a Gnuradio flow that watches 117.975-137 MHz and selectively emits white noise on channels when in use. Kills comms.
I once spent some time in Berlin train station waiting for a long-distance train. it seemed like the layout of the entire train station had been rearranged without changing any of the sign posts. it was like a quite mundane nightmare
I don't care about ascetics much at an airport except decorating around functionality.
Around 2005, the newer Shanghai airport had information boards that didn't contain information except various permutations of Windows' BSODs. IIRC, it was that terrible, inefficient design of long and narrow.
In general, DFW is a better layout: almost circles of gates globbed almost contiguous to each other as lettered terminals relatively close together connected by a bidirectional tram, many security screening entrances and exits, and people moving devices (i.e., moving walkways, "golf carts", etc.)
The new terminal D at DFW is very nice. I like lovefield as like a “working persons” airport. No frills, no BS, just show up, get on the plane, and leave. However, given the choice, I would pick dfw term D every time.
Germany doesn't traditionally have a reputation for incompetence. It sounds like this podcast gives many proximate reasons for this project's failure. What are the ultimate reasons?
Enjoying the podcast. I also remember having a ticket for BER a few years ago, ending up not landing there of course. I was there in May and it didn’t feel like a modern airport, it was pleasant but ceilings were low (after listening, no doubt an artifact of squeezing another floor in!) and signage for finding which train to take was terrible.
I have another method. Let everyone go during covid and then attempt to re-hire them all on less generous terms after the fact. Looking at you DUB (and no doubt many others).
Swiss airlines have the same issue. Pay is absolute garbage and some that have been there for 20 years are actually making less than they did back then. Many left and switched cariers during covid. It's an absolute shit show and if it keep going like this they will go bankrupt again. This time I hope we finally learn and have the government juat take it over or let it die off.
Yet still the UK holiday companies are endlessly pimping last minute summer deals with the knowledge that flights through July and August are going to be totally messed up.
People now have to wait for hours, hundreds of flights are cancelled daily and they still refuse to pay a reasonable wage. Of course the CEO blames everything on others and allots himself a big bonus as usual.
And society bailed out these guys in a big way during Corona... Next time we should just let them fall.
Not really in the UK. There wasn't any special package for airports/airlines, just the standard furlough scheme. Plus the international travel restrictions were absolutely ridiculous and literally changing day to day (for absolutely no benefit, as nowhere in Europe was running zero covid, so it literally may have saved a few days of virus growth).
For most sectors yes it was. For airlines and airports it wasn't as helpful, as the sector had very low demand throughout the whole pandemic, minus a couple of 'false start' months.
Compare this to busses and trains who got furlough PLUS a very generous package to cover nearly all of their running costs.
You seem to be talking about aid paid to companies.
The furlough scheme allowed companies to keep employees without having to pay them (they were paid by government). If airlines and airports were so short-sighted to still layoff plenty of staff then they should now be made to bear the full cost.
Furlough wasn't no cost though for companies. There were many months where you had to pay at least employers NI (which is not trivial when you are getting little to no revenue), and often a signifcant contribution of the salary too.
There really wasn't an option for many airlines and airports to continue furloughing everyone, they simply didn't have the cash to do so.
Ryanair did have the cash and they didn't lay anyone off to my knowledge - and hence are having way better performance than nearly anyone else in Europe (they also have their own airport ground crews at many airports).
> to re-hire them all on less generous terms after the fact
How executives get away with these decisions... and it's Europe wide situation if not worldwide. Of course from the perspective of executives the COVID era was a success because they fetched government bailouts, then diluted the companies' shares. Great success! bonuses followed.
Seemingly all of them across Europe done that.
There are talks to hire experienced people from Turkey to help with the workers shortage.
My guess, most people saw the airport job as a jumping board and just needed a push to quit and never come back.
Importing Turkish workers to handle Schiphol is going to cause a clusterfuck in Dutch politics through the islamophobes. The Turks were the biggest initial group of immigrants that caused backlash here.
NAIA (in the Philippines) is like that. Terrible design and layout. None of the four terminals are connected to each other, which means if you arrive internationally and are transferring to a domestic flight, you have to either get a shuttle bus or a taxi, the latter of which are notoriously scammy.
> The world is falling apart and people are still worried about harmless words.
The parent mentioned that it prevents him from sharing, not that they were personally worried about it. I'm also perfectly comfortable using salty language with friends and family, but very rarely use it on social channels. It's all about context.
The world is falling apart and people are worried about Nim compiler version 2.0. Talk about misplaced concerns.
The world is falling apart and people are worried about who wins champions league this year. Talk about misplaced concerns.
Where exactly is the line for you? What if this article began with a picture of a guy with his dick out fucking a pig that had a picture of an airport drawn on it. Would that still be acceptable? Because if its not then I have to say. The world is falling apart...
Prudish? What are you even talking about? I said I found the article interesting and have no problem reading it myself. I also use such language with my friends all the time. I'm not squeamish about it either. And no I'm not Christian, but even if I were why should it matter?
I don't want to share it with others. These others include young kids and a parent who has an interest in construction. We don't cuss at home, and I've never cussed in front of them. Similar situation for most families in my country.
What I'm saying is that by choosing to use language like this (which is COMPLETELY unnecessary btw, and kinda lazy tbh) you're preventing me from sharing it.
There's a reason why serious newspapers don't publish such headings. They cater to a wide demographic, and not everyone is ok with reading such language, and I don't see what's wrong in that.
Can we take a moment and ponder over why the title is censored? Why are we all okay with this? Who are we protecting, who are we trying to deceive? Why is it fine with everyone, that a youtube SNL skit is bleeped out?
What THE FUCK has gotten into us? Either use the word, or don't use it. Show the video, or don't show it. We should all stand tall for our (fought for) rights, this isn't the fucking 60s.
Profanity isn't an issue on HN. We tend to override Bowdlerisms and did that with the title above a while ago.
Your comment, though, falls in the category of what this site guideline asks people not to post:
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The point isn't that these things aren't annoying, it's that changing the topic of the thread to one of these annoyances is a big step down in discussion quality, so we should all try to resist.
My observation about that is that it is not a cycle but a constant motion. It is a consequence of pushing boundaries. We push and at some point we push back after a certain line has been crossed. We will probably find a balance at some point, then probably push forward again.
I mean, it really depends on what circles you are in, in our algorithmic-gatekeeped world.
There was a bit of a movement in TikTok to get freaky stuff out of Pride Parades, for example, because the younger generation of LGBT has portions that are more prudish.
Ooh! One of my bugbears. I'm not sure if the following is a recent phenomenon, but I get the impression that 'f**k' — that's two stars — is becoming more common too; for when 'f*ck' just seems too rude.
One or two stars, it's an interesting phenomenon. There are cases where you might need to censor a 'fuck' because you are citing someone (or a work named thus) in a medium that doesn't allow it, but most of it seems to be self-censorship.
When our German dot com success company was acquired by a us "enterprise", we got a few 'mericans over. After his first team meeting this young US citizen is dead embarrassed: "they are using the eff word! In meetings! All the time!" To which we suggested: welcome to Germany...
I never got around this language purity cult. You can lie whatever you like, and incite hate and what have you, but "beware your choice of words".
First: post-security you will find some of the most disgusting food ever served in an airport, but hey it’s also expensive and the servers don’t hide how much they hate being there! However, there is a little shop near the left-side stairs that sells better alcohol as well as soft drinks, and various food including (last I checked) pretty decent sandwiches. Just get provisions there and have a seat near your gate.
Second: when the security lines are moving too slowly it’s often worth trying the faraway one, which is actually outside the main hall. It’s so insanely counterintuitive, it’s the last one to get backed up.
Third: on arrival you may want a train, and it’s not at all obvious what one goes where nor even which ticket you need. You can use a standard subway ticket with any train departing from the airport, and you can buy that ticket in advance with the BVG app. Oh, and the S-Bahn is probably not the train you want if you’re reading this comment. Just go to Hauptbahnhof and reorient from there, IMO.
Guten Flug!