This week-end, because it will be closed definitely, they say, by next week, I went to visit the city airport Tempelhof. It looks like a prison with the big buildings and not something you will come inside to catch your plane. It is very impressive from outside and inside and you feel the power of Germany from this time. Now It just allows commercial flights to short destinations and with small amount of passagers because Its capacity can't take any big planes. Private jets land there as well and It is well connected with the city center in less than 30 minutes. The site of the airport was originally Knights Templar land in medieval Berlin, and from this beginning came the name Tempelhof. Later, the site was used as a parade field by Prussian forces, and by unified German forces from 1720 to the start of World War I. In 1909, Frenchman Armand Zipfel made the first flight demonstration in Tempelhof, followed by Orville Wright later that same year. Tempelhof was first officially designated as an airport on 8 October 1923. Lufthansa was founded in Tempelhof on 6 January 1926. The old terminal, originally constructed in 1927, received politicians and celebrities from around the world during the 1930s. As part of Albert Speer's plan for the reconstruction of Berlin during the Nazi era, Prof. Ernst Sagebiel was ordered to replace the old terminal with a new terminal building in 1934. The airport halls and the neighbouring buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe and a symbol of Hitler's "world capital" Germania, are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and have been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". With its façades of shell limestone, the terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941, forms a massive 1.2-kilometre long quadrant yet has a charmingly intimate feel; planes can taxi right up to the building and unload, sheltered from the weather by its enormous overhanging canopy. Passengers walk through customs controls and find themselves in a dazzlingly simple and luminous reception hall. Tempelhof is served conveniently by the U6 U-Bahn line along Mehringdamm and up Friedrichstraße (Platz der Luftbrücke station). Zentralflughafen Tempelhof-Berlin had an advantage of central location just minutes from the heart of Berlin and quickly became one of the world's busiest airports. Tempelhof saw its greatest pre-war days during 1938–1939 when more than 52 foreign and 40 domestic aircraft arrived and departed daily from the old terminal, while the new one was still under construction. The air terminal was designed as headquarters for Deutsche Lufthansa, the German national airline. As a forerunner of today's modern airports, the building was designed with many unique features including giant arc-shaped hangars for aircraft parking. Although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of World War II. The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird's spread wings. A mile long hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations. Weserwerke started war production in a new building for assembling Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bombers and later Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter planes in Tempelhof's underground tunnels. Aircraft engines were trucked to Tempelhof and joined to finished airframes. The airport is the hub of a "hub and spoke" arrangement of underground tunnels, and parts for the airplanes were brought from all parts of the city to the air base to be assembled and then flown out. Germany did not use Tempelhof as a military airfield during World War II, except for occasional emergency landings by fighter aircraft. Soviet forces took Tempelhof in the Battle of Berlin on 24 April 1945 in the closing days of the war in Europe following a fierce battle with Luftwaffe troops. Tempelhof's German commander, Colonel Rudolf Boettger, refused to carry out orders to blow up the base, choosing instead to kill himself. After he died the Russian troops attempted to clear the 5 lower levels of the airbase but the Germans had booby trapped everything and too many were killed, leading the Russian commander to order the lower levels be flooded with water. The lower 3 levels are still flooded to this day, having never been opened up due to un-exploded ordinance. In accordance with the Yalta agreements, Zentralflughafen Tempelhof-Berlin was turned over to the United States Army 2nd Armored Division on 2 July 1945 by the Soviet Union as part of the American occupation zone of Berlin. This agreement was later formalised by the August 1945 Potsdam Agreement, which formally divided Berlin into four occupation zones. On 20 June 1948 Soviet authorities, claiming technical difficulties, halted all traffic by land and by water into or out of the western-controlled section of Berlin. The only remaining access routes into the city were three 25-mile-wide air corridors across the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany. Faced with the choice of abandoning the city or attempting to supply its inhabitants with the necessities of life by air, the Western Powers chose the latter course, and for the next eleven months sustained the city's two-and-a-half million residents in one of the greatest feats in aviation history. Operation Vittles, as the airlift was unofficially named, began on 26 June when USAF Douglas C-47 "Skytrains" carried 80 tons of food into Tempelhof, far less than the estimated 4,500 tons of food, coal and other essential supplies needed daily to maintain a minimum level of existence. But this force was soon augmented by United States Navy and Royal Air Force cargo aircraft, as well as British European Airways (BEA) and some of Britain's fledgling wholly privately owned, Independent airlines. The latter included the late Sir Freddie Laker's Air Charter, Eagle Aviation and Skyways. On 15 October 1948, to promote increased safety and cooperation between the separate US and British airlift efforts, the Allies created a unified command -- the Combined Airlift Task Force under Maj. Gen. William H. Tunner, USAF, was established at Tempelhof. To facilitate the command and control, as well as the unloading of aircraft, the USAF 53rd Troop Carrier Squadron was temporarily assigned to Tempelhof. In addition to the airlift operations, American engineers constructed a new 6,000-ft runway at Tempelhof between July and September 1948 and another between September and October 1948 to accommodate the expanding requirements of the airlift. The last airlift transport touched down at Tempelhof on 30 September 1949. As the Cold War intensified in the late 1950s and 1960s, access problems to West Berlin, both by land and air, continued to cause tension. USAF aircraft were harassed as they flew in and out of the city. Throughout the Cold War years, Tempelhof was the main terminal for American military transport aircraft accessing West Berlin. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, the presence of American forces in Berlin ended. The USAF 7350th Air Base Group at Tempelhof was deactivated in June 1993. In July 1994, with President Clinton in attendance, the British, French, and American air and land forces in Berlin were deactivated in a ceremony on the Four Ring Parade field at Tempelhof in accordance with the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. The Western Allies returned a united city of Berlin to the unified German government. The U.S. Army closed its Berlin Army Aviation Detachment at TCA in August 1994, ending a 49-year American military presence in Berlin. American Overseas Airlines (AOA), at the time the overseas division of American Airlines, inaugurated the first commercial air link serving Tempelhof after the war with a flight from New York via Frankfurt on 18 May 1946. In 1950 Pan Am acquired AOA from American Airlines and established a presence at Tempelhof. In addition to continuing AOA's Berlin-Frankfurt-New York service, Pan Am commenced regular, year-round scheduled services to most major West German cities from Tempelhof with Douglas DC-4s as these were widely available at the time due to the large number of war-surplus C-54 "Skymasters" on the second-hand aircraft market. 1950 was also the year BEA and Air France joined Pan Am at Tempelhof. The former transferred its operations from Gatow and the latter resumed operations to Tempelhof following their cessation during the war years. This was furthermore the year Allied restrictions making commercial airline services from/to West Berlin accessible to Allied military personnel and their dependants only were lifted. This decision gave a major boost to West Berlin's fledgeling post-war scheduled air services, all of which were concentrated at Tempelhof at that time.
From 1951 onwards, several of the new, wholly privately owned Independent UK airlines and US supplemental carriers commenced regular air services to Tempelhof from the UK, the US and West Germany. These airlines initially carried members of the UK and US armed forces stationed in Berlin and their dependants as well as essential raw materials, finished goods manufactured in West Berlin and refugees from East Germany and Eastern Europe, who were still able to freely enter the city prior to the construction of the infamous Berlin Wall, on their flights. This operation was also known as the second, Little Berlin Airlift. One of these airlines, UK Independent Dan-Air Services (operating as Dan-Air London), would subsequently play an important role in developing commercial air services from Tegel for a quarter century. During the early to mid-1950s BEA leased in aircraft that were bigger than its Tempelhof-based fleet of "Pionair" and "Viking" piston-engined airliners from other operators to boost capacity, following a steady increase in the airline's passenger loads. In 1958 BEA began replacing its aging "Pionairs" and "Vikings" with brand-new, state-of-the-art Vickers "Viscount" 800 series turboprop aircraft. These aircraft's greater range and higher cruising speed enabled BEA to inaugurate a non-stop London Heathrow - Berlin Tempelhof service on November 1, 1965.For many years this was the only non-stop international scheduled air service from Tempelhof. On January 2, 1960 Air France, which had served Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich and its main base at Paris Orly during the previous decade with DC-4, Sud-Est "Languedoc" and Lockheed "Constellation" piston-engined equipment, shifted its entire Berlin operation to Tegel because Tempelhof's runways were too short to permit the introduction of the Sud-Aviation "Caravelle", the French flag carrier's new short-haul jet, with a viable payload. 1960 was also the year Pan Am re-equipped its Tempelhof-based fleet with larger, pressurised Douglas DC-6B piston-engined airliners. Although the DC-6B was a less advanced aircraft than either the "Viscount" or the "Caravelle", it was more economical. By the early 1960s, Pan Am had a fleet of 15 DC-6Bs stationed at its Tempelhof base, which were configured in a higher-density seating arrangement than competing airlines' aircraft. This gave it the biggest aircraft fleet among the three main scheduled operators flying from West Berlin. It furthermore enabled it to compensate for the DC-6's lack of sophistication with higher frequencies than its competitors, thereby attaining a higher market share (60%) and capturing a greater share of the lucrative business travel market than its rivals. During that period, Pan Am moreover achieved an industry-leading ultra short-haul load factor of 70% on its eight scheduled internal routes from Berlin, making the airline's Berlin routes the most profitable in its worldwide scheduled network. Following the completion of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961, the West German government introduced a route-specific subsidy of up to 20% for all internal German scheduled air services from and to West Berlin to help the airlines maintain an economically viable operation on these lifeline routes. By the early 1960s, a number of UK Independents and US supplementals began operating regular charter flights from Tempelhof. These carried both inbound tourists from the US, the UK and other countries as well as local outbound tourists to the emerging holiday resorts in the Mediterranean. London Gatwick-based UK Independent Lloyd International became the first charter airline to permanently station some of its aircraft at Tempelhof, when it based two Bristol "Britannia" turboprops at the airport from the beginning of the 1966 summer season. These aircraft were operating a series of inclusive tour flights under contract to Berliner Flug Ring, a newly established West Berlin package tour operator. In January 1966 Pan Am became the first airline to commence regular, year-round jet operations from Tempelhof with the first examples of a brand-new fleet of Boeing 727 100 series, one of the first "short-field" performance jet aircraft. These aircraft were configured in a single class featuring 128 economy seats. Pan Am's move put BEA at a considerable competitive disadvantage, especially on the busy Berlin-Frankfurt route where the former out-competed the latter with both modern jet planes as well as a higher flight frequency. BEA responded by supplementing its Tempelhof-based "Viscount" fleet with a pair of De Havilland "Comet" 4B series jetliners. Although these aircraft could operate from Tempelhof's short runways without payload restrictions - unlike the 4/4C series versions of that aircraft type, they were not suited to the airline's ultra short-haul operation from Berlin (average stage length: 230 miles) given the high fuel consumption of the "Comet", especially when operating at the mandatory 10,000 feet altitude inside the Allied air corridors. This measure was therefore only a stopgap until BEA's BAC One-Eleven 500s arrived in Berlin. BEA furthermore responded to Pan Am's competitive threat by re-configuring its Berlin-based "Viscounts" with a lower-density seating arrangement, as a result of which these aircraft featured only 52 instead of 68 seats. Henceforth, the airline marketed these services as Super Silver Star. In 1968 BEA began replacing its Berlin-based "Viscounts" with the new One-Eleven 500s, which it called the Super One-Eleven. These aircraft featured a 99-seat, single class configuration. 1968 was also the year all non-scheduled services, i.e. primarily the rapidly growing number of inclusive tour charter flights, were concentrated at Tegel to alleviate increasing congestion at Tempelhof and to make better use of Tegel, which was underutilised at the time. Commercial air traffic from/to Berlin Tempelhof peaked in 1971 at just below five-and-a-half million passengers (out of a total of 6.12 m passengers for all West Berlin airports during that year). Pan Am accounted for the bulk of this traffic with more than 3.3m passengers, followed by BEA with over 2.1m passengers. 1971 was also the year BEA's last "Viscount" departed Berlin. East Germany's relaxation of border controls affecting all surface transport modes between West Berlin and West Germany across its territory from 1972 onwards resulted in a decline of scheduled internal German air traffic from/to West Berlin. This was further compounded by the recession in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. The resulting fare increases that were intended to recover the airlines' higher operating costs caused by steeply rising jet fuel prices led to a further drop in demand. This in turn resulted in a major contraction of Pan Am's and BEA's/British Airways's internal German operations, necessitating a reduction in both airlines' Berlin-based fleets (from 14 to eleven aircraft in Pan Am's case, and from nine to seven aircraft in BA's case) and turning these once profitable routes into loss-makers by the mid-1970s. On 1 September 1975 Pan Am and British Airways moved their entire Berlin operation to the newly built terminal at Tegel Airport. Following Pan Am's and BA's move to Tegel, Tempelhof was exclusively used by the US military until 1985. The end of the Cold War and German reunification opened Tempelhof for non-allied air traffic on 3 October 1990. US President Bill Clinton christened a new Boeing C17A "Globemaster III" transport plane (serial number 96-0006) the Spirit of Berlin at Tempelhof on 12 May 1998, to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Blockade.(May 12, 1949) Today commercial use is mostly in the form of small commuter aircraft flying regionally. Plans are in place to shut down Tempelhof and Tegel, and make Schönefeld the sole commercial airport for Berlin. In 1996, the former mayor of Berlin Eberhard Diepgen, Brandenburg’s governor Stolpe and the federal transport minister Wissmann established the so-called “Consensus resolution”. The entire planning aimed at concentrating domestic and international air traffic in Berlin and Brandenburg at one airport: Berlin-Schönefeld International Airport. To ensure investment protection as well as to fend off opposition to Schöenefeld International's expansion, it was mandated that first Tempelhof and then Tegel must be closed. On December 4, 2007, the Federal Administrative Court of Germany (Bundesverwaltungsgericht) made the final decision as court of last instance to close Tempelhof Airport. An initiative for a nonbinding referendum on the level of the Land Berlin against closure was held and failed, after the initial number of signatures required were collected. According to the constitution of the state of Berlin, the number of supportive signatures that were required to be collected within four months in order to compel a referendum amounts to 7% of the population of Berlin entitled to vote, or 169,784. The four months period for the collection of signatures at the Berlin district townhalls ended on 14 February 2008. 203,408 signatures were lodged. The referendum was held on 27 April 2008. All eligible voters received an information brochure along with their notification. A majority of the votes was necessary to support the referendum, but this had to be at least one quarter of all eligible Berlin voters. The initiative for keeping Tempelhof open was supported by the ICAT (Interessengemeinschaft City-Airport Tempelhof) along with a couple of opposition parties in the Berlin city parliament: the Christian Democratic Union and the Free Democratic Party citing primarily the need for an inner-city airport for business and private flyers as well as nostalgic reasons. Representatives from the ICAT suggested keeping the airport open just until Schönefeld Airport is completed in about 2012. The Berlin government insisted on the closure of the airport for legal, long-term economic, and environmental reasons, in particular to ensure the expansion of Schönefeld International. Environmental groups and the Green party supported them in this. Plans for the future would include for example an airlift museum in the old terminal building, commercial space for innovative businesses, new housing and industrial areas, sports facilities, and parks. Legally the decision in favour of closure at the end of October 2008 was irrevocable and the referendum was nonbinding. A subsequent reopening would have faced high legal barriers. However, some legal experts said there may be means to circumvent this. The referendum of April 27 2008 failed. Although 60.2 % of the votes cast were for the initiative to keep the airport open, this was by only 21.7 % of the eligible voters; 25 % had been required. Support had been highest in western districts of Berlin (up to 80 %), but opposition (i.e. 30 % approval) and disinterest was prevalent in eastern districts. Voter turnout of 36 % was low. Air traffic at Tempelhof Airport will thus cease for good on November 1, 2008 and the expansion of Schönefeld Airport can continue unhindered.
From 1951 onwards, several of the new, wholly privately owned Independent UK airlines and US supplemental carriers commenced regular air services to Tempelhof from the UK, the US and West Germany. These airlines initially carried members of the UK and US armed forces stationed in Berlin and their dependants as well as essential raw materials, finished goods manufactured in West Berlin and refugees from East Germany and Eastern Europe, who were still able to freely enter the city prior to the construction of the infamous Berlin Wall, on their flights. This operation was also known as the second, Little Berlin Airlift. One of these airlines, UK Independent Dan-Air Services (operating as Dan-Air London), would subsequently play an important role in developing commercial air services from Tegel for a quarter century. During the early to mid-1950s BEA leased in aircraft that were bigger than its Tempelhof-based fleet of "Pionair" and "Viking" piston-engined airliners from other operators to boost capacity, following a steady increase in the airline's passenger loads. In 1958 BEA began replacing its aging "Pionairs" and "Vikings" with brand-new, state-of-the-art Vickers "Viscount" 800 series turboprop aircraft. These aircraft's greater range and higher cruising speed enabled BEA to inaugurate a non-stop London Heathrow - Berlin Tempelhof service on November 1, 1965.For many years this was the only non-stop international scheduled air service from Tempelhof. On January 2, 1960 Air France, which had served Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich and its main base at Paris Orly during the previous decade with DC-4, Sud-Est "Languedoc" and Lockheed "Constellation" piston-engined equipment, shifted its entire Berlin operation to Tegel because Tempelhof's runways were too short to permit the introduction of the Sud-Aviation "Caravelle", the French flag carrier's new short-haul jet, with a viable payload. 1960 was also the year Pan Am re-equipped its Tempelhof-based fleet with larger, pressurised Douglas DC-6B piston-engined airliners. Although the DC-6B was a less advanced aircraft than either the "Viscount" or the "Caravelle", it was more economical. By the early 1960s, Pan Am had a fleet of 15 DC-6Bs stationed at its Tempelhof base, which were configured in a higher-density seating arrangement than competing airlines' aircraft. This gave it the biggest aircraft fleet among the three main scheduled operators flying from West Berlin. It furthermore enabled it to compensate for the DC-6's lack of sophistication with higher frequencies than its competitors, thereby attaining a higher market share (60%) and capturing a greater share of the lucrative business travel market than its rivals. During that period, Pan Am moreover achieved an industry-leading ultra short-haul load factor of 70% on its eight scheduled internal routes from Berlin, making the airline's Berlin routes the most profitable in its worldwide scheduled network. Following the completion of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961, the West German government introduced a route-specific subsidy of up to 20% for all internal German scheduled air services from and to West Berlin to help the airlines maintain an economically viable operation on these lifeline routes. By the early 1960s, a number of UK Independents and US supplementals began operating regular charter flights from Tempelhof. These carried both inbound tourists from the US, the UK and other countries as well as local outbound tourists to the emerging holiday resorts in the Mediterranean. London Gatwick-based UK Independent Lloyd International became the first charter airline to permanently station some of its aircraft at Tempelhof, when it based two Bristol "Britannia" turboprops at the airport from the beginning of the 1966 summer season. These aircraft were operating a series of inclusive tour flights under contract to Berliner Flug Ring, a newly established West Berlin package tour operator. In January 1966 Pan Am became the first airline to commence regular, year-round jet operations from Tempelhof with the first examples of a brand-new fleet of Boeing 727 100 series, one of the first "short-field" performance jet aircraft. These aircraft were configured in a single class featuring 128 economy seats. Pan Am's move put BEA at a considerable competitive disadvantage, especially on the busy Berlin-Frankfurt route where the former out-competed the latter with both modern jet planes as well as a higher flight frequency. BEA responded by supplementing its Tempelhof-based "Viscount" fleet with a pair of De Havilland "Comet" 4B series jetliners. Although these aircraft could operate from Tempelhof's short runways without payload restrictions - unlike the 4/4C series versions of that aircraft type, they were not suited to the airline's ultra short-haul operation from Berlin (average stage length: 230 miles) given the high fuel consumption of the "Comet", especially when operating at the mandatory 10,000 feet altitude inside the Allied air corridors. This measure was therefore only a stopgap until BEA's BAC One-Eleven 500s arrived in Berlin. BEA furthermore responded to Pan Am's competitive threat by re-configuring its Berlin-based "Viscounts" with a lower-density seating arrangement, as a result of which these aircraft featured only 52 instead of 68 seats. Henceforth, the airline marketed these services as Super Silver Star. In 1968 BEA began replacing its Berlin-based "Viscounts" with the new One-Eleven 500s, which it called the Super One-Eleven. These aircraft featured a 99-seat, single class configuration. 1968 was also the year all non-scheduled services, i.e. primarily the rapidly growing number of inclusive tour charter flights, were concentrated at Tegel to alleviate increasing congestion at Tempelhof and to make better use of Tegel, which was underutilised at the time. Commercial air traffic from/to Berlin Tempelhof peaked in 1971 at just below five-and-a-half million passengers (out of a total of 6.12 m passengers for all West Berlin airports during that year). Pan Am accounted for the bulk of this traffic with more than 3.3m passengers, followed by BEA with over 2.1m passengers. 1971 was also the year BEA's last "Viscount" departed Berlin. East Germany's relaxation of border controls affecting all surface transport modes between West Berlin and West Germany across its territory from 1972 onwards resulted in a decline of scheduled internal German air traffic from/to West Berlin. This was further compounded by the recession in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. The resulting fare increases that were intended to recover the airlines' higher operating costs caused by steeply rising jet fuel prices led to a further drop in demand. This in turn resulted in a major contraction of Pan Am's and BEA's/British Airways's internal German operations, necessitating a reduction in both airlines' Berlin-based fleets (from 14 to eleven aircraft in Pan Am's case, and from nine to seven aircraft in BA's case) and turning these once profitable routes into loss-makers by the mid-1970s. On 1 September 1975 Pan Am and British Airways moved their entire Berlin operation to the newly built terminal at Tegel Airport. Following Pan Am's and BA's move to Tegel, Tempelhof was exclusively used by the US military until 1985. The end of the Cold War and German reunification opened Tempelhof for non-allied air traffic on 3 October 1990. US President Bill Clinton christened a new Boeing C17A "Globemaster III" transport plane (serial number 96-0006) the Spirit of Berlin at Tempelhof on 12 May 1998, to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Blockade.(May 12, 1949) Today commercial use is mostly in the form of small commuter aircraft flying regionally. Plans are in place to shut down Tempelhof and Tegel, and make Schönefeld the sole commercial airport for Berlin. In 1996, the former mayor of Berlin Eberhard Diepgen, Brandenburg’s governor Stolpe and the federal transport minister Wissmann established the so-called “Consensus resolution”. The entire planning aimed at concentrating domestic and international air traffic in Berlin and Brandenburg at one airport: Berlin-Schönefeld International Airport. To ensure investment protection as well as to fend off opposition to Schöenefeld International's expansion, it was mandated that first Tempelhof and then Tegel must be closed. On December 4, 2007, the Federal Administrative Court of Germany (Bundesverwaltungsgericht) made the final decision as court of last instance to close Tempelhof Airport. An initiative for a nonbinding referendum on the level of the Land Berlin against closure was held and failed, after the initial number of signatures required were collected. According to the constitution of the state of Berlin, the number of supportive signatures that were required to be collected within four months in order to compel a referendum amounts to 7% of the population of Berlin entitled to vote, or 169,784. The four months period for the collection of signatures at the Berlin district townhalls ended on 14 February 2008. 203,408 signatures were lodged. The referendum was held on 27 April 2008. All eligible voters received an information brochure along with their notification. A majority of the votes was necessary to support the referendum, but this had to be at least one quarter of all eligible Berlin voters. The initiative for keeping Tempelhof open was supported by the ICAT (Interessengemeinschaft City-Airport Tempelhof) along with a couple of opposition parties in the Berlin city parliament: the Christian Democratic Union and the Free Democratic Party citing primarily the need for an inner-city airport for business and private flyers as well as nostalgic reasons. Representatives from the ICAT suggested keeping the airport open just until Schönefeld Airport is completed in about 2012. The Berlin government insisted on the closure of the airport for legal, long-term economic, and environmental reasons, in particular to ensure the expansion of Schönefeld International. Environmental groups and the Green party supported them in this. Plans for the future would include for example an airlift museum in the old terminal building, commercial space for innovative businesses, new housing and industrial areas, sports facilities, and parks. Legally the decision in favour of closure at the end of October 2008 was irrevocable and the referendum was nonbinding. A subsequent reopening would have faced high legal barriers. However, some legal experts said there may be means to circumvent this. The referendum of April 27 2008 failed. Although 60.2 % of the votes cast were for the initiative to keep the airport open, this was by only 21.7 % of the eligible voters; 25 % had been required. Support had been highest in western districts of Berlin (up to 80 %), but opposition (i.e. 30 % approval) and disinterest was prevalent in eastern districts. Voter turnout of 36 % was low. Air traffic at Tempelhof Airport will thus cease for good on November 1, 2008 and the expansion of Schönefeld Airport can continue unhindered.
No comments:
Post a Comment