Berlin Tegel Airport

No German airport had as many fans as Tegel – and hardly any had as many critics. The hexagonal terminal got you from the taxi to the aircraft in a few steps, jets came in low over the rooftops of Reinickendorf and Wedding, and over the decades Pan Am, Air France, Air Berlin and easyJet stood on the apron. Since November 2020, it’s over. For spotters, TXL is now a chapter of aviation history – and an archive topic well worth organizing.

From rocket airfield to Airlift

Long before scheduled jets landed here, the site in the north of Berlin was a military training ground. In 1930, the rocket pioneer Rudolf Nebel set up the so-called Raketenflugplatz Berlin (Berlin Rocket Airfield) there, where early liquid-fuel rockets were tested. It wasn’t an airport in today’s sense yet.

That changed with the blockade of West Berlin in 1948. During the Berlin Airlift, Tempelhof in the American sector and Gatow in the British sector were no longer enough to supply the city by air. The French occupying power therefore had a new, long runway built at Tegel starting in August 1948 – at enormous speed and with a great effort by Berlin workers. As early as November 5, 1948, the first Douglas C-54 landed. In December, French soldiers blew up the transmitter masts of the nearby Tegel radio station because they obstructed flight operations.

The Allies’ gateway to West Berlin

After the war, special air law applied to West Berlin: in scheduled traffic, only airlines of the three Western Allies were allowed to fly to the city, and only through fixed air corridors over East Germany. For Lufthansa, Berlin was thus off-limits until 1990. Tegel lay in the French sector, so it is no coincidence that Air France of all airlines operated the first scheduled flight from Tegel on January 2, 1960.

The bulk of Allied scheduled traffic, however, ran through Tempelhof for a long time, until it became too small for jets. Pan Am offered a connection to New York from Tegel from 1964, discontinued again in 1971. On September 1, 1975, all civil scheduled traffic then moved from Tempelhof to Tegel – and with it the domestic German services of Pan Am and British Airways. You can read the predecessor’s story in the entry on Berlin Tempelhof Airport and in the magazine article on the history of Tempelhof.

In leisure traffic, too, Tegel was the place for Allied carriers: from April 1968, charter flights moved here from Tempelhof. The British Dan-Air expanded its Berlin business from 1972 and kept its own base at Tegel for many years. In 1979, a newcomer arrived that would later shape the airport: Air Berlin, at that time still US-licensed, with a Boeing 707 to Palma de Mallorca.

The aircraft types in the table are typical examples of each era, not a complete fleet list.

The hexagon: an airport of short distances

In the 1960s, the young Hamburg firm Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) designed a new airport in the southern part of Tegel. Construction began in 1970, and the terminal entered service on November 1, 1974. The basic idea was radically simple: instead of sending passengers through long halls, the buildings formed a hexagon with an inner courtyard that cars and taxis drove right into. From the curb, it was only a few meters to check-in at the gate, and the aircraft parked outside around the ring at 14 jet bridges.

For travelers, it was ingenious: no walking through endless corridors, plus fast baggage claim. For operations, the concept had a price. Because each group of gates needed its own security checkpoint, the hexagon could hardly be adapted to modern security requirements and to large connecting flows. Since April 2019, terminal and control tower have been listed monuments.

Two runways at the city’s edge

The runway system was straightforward. Two parallel runways ran east–west: the longer north runway 08L/26R at around 3,000 meters, approved for approaches in both directions under the strictest all-weather categories, and the shorter south runway 08R/26L at around 2,400 meters. Both were 46 meters wide. Between them and south of them lay aprons and terminals, and in the northern part of the grounds the facilities later used by the Flugbereitschaft.

As at every airport, the runway direction in use depended on the wind. With the prevailing west wind in Berlin, aircraft took off and landed in direction 26 – landings then came in from the east over the densely built-up city area. How runway designations and runway direction in use relate is explained in the articles on runway designations and on the runway direction in use at airports.

Approach over the rooftops

These very approaches made Tegel legendary among spotters. The approach path led over residential areas in Reinickendorf, Wedding and Pankow, and on the other side over Spandau. Around Kurt-Schumacher-Platz, the jets came in so low over streets and houses that pictures combining landing gear, traffic lights and apartment blocks in a single subject were possible, which at hardly any other major German airport were.

The downside was enormous. Around 240,000 residents lived in areas with significant noise exposure. The noise was one of the strongest arguments for consolidating Berlin’s traffic at one site on the city’s edge.

After reunification: Lufthansa, Air Berlin and growth

With reunification, the Allied restrictions fell. In October 1990, Lufthansa took over Pan Am’s domestic German services, and Tegel opened up to airlines from around the world. With the withdrawal of the French armed forces, the airport also became a government airport in 1994; from then on, the Flugbereitschaft was based in the northern part. Its aircraft moved to BER in October 2020, while the helicopters stayed in Tegel-Nord for several more years.

The real success story was written by Air Berlin. After 2000, the small Mallorca charter airline became Germany’s second-largest airline with Tegel as its most important hub, later as a member of oneworld with long-haul routes to the US, among others. Insolvency came in August 2017, and on October 27, 2017, the last Air Berlin scheduled flight landed at Tegel. The whole story is told in the article on Air Berlin, put into context in the overview of major airline collapses in Europe.

Others filled the gap. easyJet took over part of the Air Berlin business at Tegel and was most recently the largest airline at the airport. Besides it, Lufthansa, Eurowings, Ryanair and Swiss, among others, flew there. On long-haul, there were only a handful of connections, for example to Doha, New York, Beijing and Singapore – widebody jets always remained something special at Tegel.

An airport at its limit

The hexagon was planned in the 1970s for around 2.5 million passengers a year. Officially, the terminals were most recently rated for 11.5 million – but in 2019 Tegel counted a good 24.2 million passengers and just under 194,000 takeoffs and landings. To handle this traffic at all, the airport spread outward with makeshift solutions:

• Terminal B was created from an older hall and served as an extension next to the hexagon.
• Terminal C opened on May 24, 2007 and was expanded in 2009 and 2011.
• Terminals D and E were simple processing areas in a parking garage south of the hexagon.

Passengers felt the consequences daily: queues at check-in and security, cramped waiting areas and a connection only by bus and road. A rail link was never built. No wonder Tegel often scored poorly in customer reviews – and was still loved by many Berliners.

Referendum and last flight

That Tegel would close had been settled for a long time: the closure was part of the approval for the new capital airport. Because its opening was postponed again and again, however, Tegel kept running year after year. In 2017, 56.1 percent of participants voted in a referendum to keep it open. It was not legally binding, and the co-owners, the federal government and Brandenburg, held to the closure.

On October 31, 2020, Berlin Brandenburg Airport opened. A week later, on November 8, 2020, scheduled operations ended at Tegel. Symbolically, the very airline that had operated the first scheduled flight in 1960 said goodbye: Air France AF1235 to Paris-Charles de Gaulle, an Airbus A320, flew a lap of honor around the terminal before departure and was sent off by the airport fire department with a water-cannon salute. How best to capture such events on other occasions is described in the article on farewell flights and first flights.

The operating license expired at the end of May 4, 2021, and the next day the site was deregistered as an airport.

What becomes of Tegel

After flight operations ended, the State of Berlin took over development of the site. Under the name Berlin TXL, a new district is being created on around 500 hectares. It consists essentially of three parts:

In the interim, Tegel served other purposes: Terminal C was one of Berlin’s vaccination centers from 2021 to 2022, and from 2022 the State of Berlin used terminals and halls as an arrival center and accommodation for refugees. What happens to the individual buildings depends on construction progress – the state-owned project company publishes the current status.

Experiencing Tegel as a spotter today

You can no longer see aircraft fly at Tegel. If you want to spot in Berlin, head to BER in the south of the city. There, the observation deck offers a legal view of the apron, and many airlines that used to serve Tegel can still be seen there.

For aviation history, Berlin still has plenty to offer. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg tells the story of aviation from the beginnings to the postwar period. On the former British airfield at Gatow, the Military History Museum Berlin-Gatow shows numerous aircraft outdoors – a destination you can take a closer look at in the spot guide to Gatow airfield. If you want to dive deeper into airport history, you’ll find the detailed history of Tegel in the magazine.

Conclusion

Tegel was an airport with character: born in the Airlift, for decades the Allies’ gateway to West Berlin, home of Air Berlin and in the end hopelessly overloaded. gmp’s hexagon still shows what an airport of short distances can look like – and why it failed at its own limits.

For you as a spotter, TXL is now a piece of history that lives on in photo albums, archives and old logbooks. If you organize your Tegel pictures cleanly by registration, type and date, you preserve exactly what made the airport what it was: the colorful mix of airlines and aircraft over the rooftops of Berlin.