Problems for Berlin's €5.4B white elephant airport as engineers say the roof is too heavy

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Fans were originally installed in 2012, but found to be over weight limit
Latest in a long-line of problems that has dogged the futuristic airport
The lights can't be switched off and the wrong trees were planted

Published: 09:13 EST, 22 September 2015 | Updated: 09:37 EST, 22 September 2015

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The long-running saga surrounding Berlin's Brandenburg Airport took another turn for the worst when construction was halted over fears the roof is too heavy and could collapse.

Originally scheduled to open for business in 2011, the airport was supposed to be state-of-the-art -and eventually merge with the city's other two operating sites, Tegel and Schönefeld.

It was to be a sign of Berlin's transformation from Cold War confrontation line to world class capital of Europe's economic powerhouse. Instead it has become a symbol of how, even for this technological titan, things can go horribly wrong.

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The long-running saga surrounding Berlin's Brandenburg Airport took another turn for the worst when construction was halted over fears the roof is too heavy and could collapse

'Heavier flue gas fans were installed ahead of the original opening date in 2012 than assumed in the original plans,' an airport official wrote

After four publicly announced delays, officials acknowledged the airport wouldn't be ready until October 2013.

Fast-forward almost two years, and the site is no nearer to being able to accommodate international flights and streams of passengers.

Regarding the new roof issues, a spokesperson wrote on the airport's website: 'In three of the 20 ceiling panels, it would appear that heavier flue gas fans were installed ahead of the original opening date in 2012 than assumed in the original plans.

'This necessitated new evidence of static structural safety.'

Work was halted and the terminal area was cleared to allow safety work to begin on the affected panels.

Originally scheduled to open for business in 2011, the airport was supposed to be state-of-the-art

The airport was apparently ready to open in 2014 when it was discovered the fire safety system did not work properly

Spot the problem: At least £2,000 every 12 hours are thought to be being wasted on lights at BER Airport

IS PRIVATISATION THE WAY OUT?

Berlin is trying to attract private investors including Macquarie and JP Morgan to take a stake in its much-delayed new international airport, German newspaper Bild have reported.

The investors are to be given confidential details of the airport's business plans so that they can make concrete offers, Bild am Sonntag said, without citing sources.

A spokesman for the airport said there were no new developments regarding a possible part privatisation.

He said the company was in a 'pre-notification phase' with the European Commission, in which it has to demonstrate the potential return on investment for any private investor.

The spokesman referred to a June 18 statement in which the airport said: 'This does not, however, prejudge whether FBB (Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg) should be privatised, either in whole or in part.'

He declined to comment specifically on 'speculation' as to whether particular potential investors had been contacted.

Spokespeople for Macquarie and JP Morgan were not immediately reachable in Germany.

The costs of the project up to this point is a staggering £5.4billion. The site is built to supposedly handle around 27 million flyers every year and could be expanded to about 45 million travelers later.

A tentative opening has been pencilled for some time in 2017.

The saga of Berlin's new airport has turned into a national joke and a source of humiliation for a people renowned for having ruthless efficiency.

It is the highest profile calamity among several that have hit big-ticket projects.

A concert hall in Hamburg, railway tunnels in Munich and Leipzig, a subway line in Cologne and a Stuttgart underground train station have all been plagued by huge cost overruns and delays.

The airport fiasco presents a staggering picture of incompetence.

German media have tracked down a list of tens of thousands of technical problems. Among them: Officials can't even figure out how to turn the lights off.

Thousands of light bulbs illuminate the gigantic main terminal and unused parking lots around the clock, a massive energy and cost drain that appears to be the result of a computer system that's so sophisticated it's almost impossible to operate.

Every day, an empty commuter train rolls to the unfinished airport over a five-mile long stretch to keep the newly-laid tracks from getting rusty.

The saga of Berlin's new airport has turned into a national joke and a source of humiliation

A tentative opening has been pencilled for some time in 2017

Meanwhile, hundreds of freshly planted trees had to be chopped down because a company delivered the wrong type of linden trees, several escalators need to be rebuilt because they were too short and dozen of tiles were already broken before a single airport passenger ever stepped on them.

The airport itself points to problems with the fire safety system as the immediate cause of the delays: The fire safety system incorporates some 75,000 sprinklers, but computer programming glitches mean it's not clear whether all of these sprinklers would spray enough water during a fire.

And the system's underground vent system, designed to suck away smoke, isn't working.

'The airport is a classic example of the incompetence of our politicians,' said Sven Fandrich, a 28-year-old Berliner who works for an insurance company.

'We've seen this happen with many big infrastructure projects in Germany. Nobody feels responsible. The politicians are more concerned about winning the next elections than devoting their service to the people.'