Flight Report
BA 983 Berlin - London Heathrow
11 Sept 2025
18:55 - 19:50

...

Berlin's new Brandenberg Airport has been mired in controversy long before it opened over a decade late in October 2020. Inspectors reported some 120,000 defects, including dangerously-wired cables and fire safety concerns. What was supposed to be a modern wonder to symbolize Berlin's unification has turned out to be the opposite. Don't even ask how much they overran the budget.

Politics and history aside. Let's fly.

Getting here is easy enough. It is on the S train network with a spacious and bright station underneath the terminal.

Then it's a 2-escalator ride up to the departures hall.

Arriving 80 minutes before departure and coming close to the check-in cutoff, I was surprised the counter queue was empty. BA has a lot of flights to London everyday and during the evening hour, it's pretty much a flight once an hour. The agent was friendly and advised me to hurry up as the security wait would be about 20 minutes and I still need to clear passport control after. So I didn't have much time to explore the nice land-side area.

There was a crowd of people stuck ahead of the security gate and they weren't moving. It was 10 minutes before 6pm so I had time to wait but not that much for a prolonged stay. Staff were holding us back from scanning in as it was super crowded inside. At first I wondered whether they opened all the many scanners but as I inched closer, it looked like almost all of them were open. I also saw a sign saying all electronics can stay in our bags, so I was curious why the line was moving so slowly?

20 minutes later, I was ready to cross. The security lanes here seem to be operating inconsistently and more importantly, slowly. I saw signs saying 3 of you can go up at the same time to make things go quicker, but my lane's surly staff was restricting to 1 at a time only. The trays were also slow to come out and spit out one a time to the finish line with a long gap in between. These are the same scanners as in other airports but the ones in London seem to operate a lot faster. So perhaps having 1 go a time will be better since we all get bunched up here anyway?

There are a few dining options here air-side, but with passport control next, I didn't want to spend too much time looking for a take-out dinner here and headed upstairs, where there was another long line for non-EU passport holders. Only 2 counters were open and it didn't look like London was the only flight leaving out of this section at this hour.

By now it's less than 20 minutes before departure so I had to hurry up to grab a sandwich. There are far less shops in this part and I couldn't see any sit-down restaurants either. Luckily, my gate is just after passport control and by now, some people were already lined up and ready to go.

Observing the activity from the windows, this isn't a very busy airport, which intuitively makes sense given the major Lufthansa hubs are Frankfurt and Munich. Yet, the long lines and crowds to get air-side today don't reflect that. It's a bit of a let-down considering the hardware is excellent - a simple, sleek design. It's nothing fancy but it is functionally beautiful.

There aren't that many non-Schengen international flights but it is well-connected by the typical big transit carriers such as Turkish and Qatar.

We pushed back at 7:15pm and it was a short 10-minute taxi to take-off.

On these short-haul flights, it is fairly uneventful and I took advantage of the free wifi to pass the time. It is only an hour and a half back to London.

We touched down at 7:54pm for an on-time arrival. At this late hour, the shops in the terminal were starting to discount their food as closing approaches.

There was also a strike happening on the Underground as well, which was the main reason why I headed to Germany since I wouldn't be able to venture around London those few days anyway.

Berlin's new airport looks nice but the usage experience was not pleasant. I wouldn't put it on my priority list to return.