Berlin Brandenburg Airport

✅ Trip Verified | It is by far the worst airport I have been, and I have travel quite a lot. At arrival we were forced to take and absurd amount of stairs with our luggage, to go out to the main exit. At departure another huge disappointment, the security personal, 1 man in particular was very rude to me while I was trying to handle a situation with the liquids in my luggage, to the point of causing me an anxiety attack, I had to request a police officer to stop the so call man to continue his harrasment, I filed a complain. The offer of service in the check in is fatal, I had priority pass and was no lane for that, a complete disaster.

Not Verified | We arrived 2 hours prior to our flight, just for the security check. Long story short, we would have missed our flight if some guys hadn't agreed to let us skip the line twice. It would have taken over 3 hours. Also, the staff are incredibly rude. Never have I seen this in my life! Not in Buenos Aires, Tokyo or NY airport. Never!

Not Verified | Flying in, the airport was great - airbridge from the plane, no queue at passport control, baggage reclaim quick, easy to find the train. Departing was horrendous. Special assistance couldn't really offer any assistance unless you were a wheelchair user. Signage was dreadful. Priority security took 90 minutes. Security staff were horrendously rude. Followed the signs at passport control, only to be screamed at by a member of staff because apparently I needed my boarding pass scanned (again!) first. The only polite staff member I met was the person in the passport control booth. No time for shopping or food as our flight was due to board. Long walk to gate, and then flight was delayed and there weren't enough seats at the gate. We were then told our flight would be boarding "from an apron position" and had to walk down 6 flights of steep, wet stone steps to board a bus, which drove us out to the apron. We had to wait 15 minutes to disembark the bus and board the plane, as passengers from the previous flight requiring special assistance had been left waiting on the plane for half an hour. There was then a further wait, as only one bus had been provided, so once we had left the bus, it had to travel back to the terminal to pick up the remaining passengers for our flight. It was a complete shambles - how a newly built airport can be this bad is beyond me

Not Verified | I landed here from Cyprus and departed here also. Signage is poor for arrival and access to trains. Customs was good as I was the only person in line. Baggage was fast. Departure. Check in ok. I had upgraded on one leg so could check in as business. This allowed priority security. Not a big wait. The airport seems a bit too wide open. Not a welcoming environment. I used the Lufthansa lounge which was the extreme end of B area. It was relaxing. Of course they changed my gate and it ended up being the A area. Long walk. It was a gate with no waiting area in front. That was the worst of my departure experience. Kind of miss Tegel, this airport is about an hour out. I don't know about T2 but T1 is not high up in the airport rankings for me. Can't really recommend it, Berlin deserved better.

✅ Trip Verified | The security line was so long it was crazy. The priority lines means nothing. The security people are rude to another level. No respect no empathy

Not Verified | Security lines are ridiculously long and i find it amazing that nobody seems to take steps to correct it - for example I was in a Priority Line this morning having arrived at 5:35 am for a 7:15 am flight. It took me around 70 minutes to clear security with just one counter open - there was certainly plenty of infrastructure in terms of the number of security check points but most of them were closed. And to add to the confusion the signs that show the waiting time in each security zone couldn’t be more confusing! What does a sign showing 8 human symbols really mean? I would highly recommend coming at least 90-120 minutes prior to your flight.

Not Verified | I really couldn’t believe that this sort of airport is in Germany. Security lines are long and unorganized. The unofficial queue line winds throughout the baggage check-in area. Then you finally make it to the official que and the workers don’t seem to understand their job. And I traveled on a relatively slow Wednesday. Plan at least one extra hour for security at this airport on a regular day. And who knows how much more on a busy travel day.

Not Verified | Once again another shambolic experience at this airport from lack of security staff to the ridiculous layout and then the boarding procedure! Quite astonishing given it is only months old!

Not Verified | Unbelievably bad. On arrival I just followed the crowd and ended up getting to an immigration checkpoint to leave the country, as did many other people from the my flight. The immigration staff seemed used to this chaos so clearly it happens all the time. How this could happen at all in a brand new airport is beyond me. When the confusion was finally resolved I noted the signage for the exit and baggage hall was absolutely insufficient and made little sense. Then when you have finally managed to find the out of the way route to baggage reclaim there was a 35 minute wait for my bag. Afterwards there is another strange, large and uncovered walk in the rain to the taxi rank from the exit. Unfortunately I had to use the airport again at the end of the weekend and it was little better. Avoided a massive queue at security by mistake by using the underused area at the left hand side rather than the packed area in the middle. Once through it was mobbed with very few seats. Eventually got one in the overpriced food area up stairs. When going on the long march to the A gates noted none of the moving walkways were in operation. The gate area was tiny and had no seats leading to the whole flight either sitting on the floor or standing about packed together. Led to a big bottleneck even getting to the gate and because of this boarding a full flight took us way past departure time. The power sockets were working for people to plug in their phones. The wifi didn’t work. I can’t believe they built this airport from scratch and got it so wrong. A shambles.

Not Verified | I used thus airport in September just after it opened last year and it was chaotic: there were queues and chaos, passengers almost coming to blows with the staff. No-one seemed to have any organisational skills, flights were delayed, signage was poor, it was a mess, the worst I have experienced in flights throughout Europe. So thinking that Berlin Brandenburg must have improved I had another try. Arrival was a bit better, but my departure was even worse than in September. There were over 250 passengers waiting at a check in gate, with just 3 lanes open; other adjacent gates were closed! So recognising the chaos a member of the staff walked along the line of anxious passengers with the message that there was another check in gate open but it would take five minutes to get to that gate, but it would be "better". This was not a message over the loudspeaker system but a single individual walking along the line - and the message was entirely in German, even though many passengers were not German (it was an international departure gate!). You think, perhaps hope, it can't get worse - wrong! Once you have been through the security gate, you then have to go to another queuing set of lanes to have your passport checked, as if it hasn't occurred to anyone that security control could check passports, so that only one queue would be needed - and by the way you also have to have your passport checked at the airline departure gate should you have the stamina to get to it. Aha so exhausted you get to your airline gate, mistakenly thinking all is over, I am nearly there; you are not. The steward (from your chosen airline) at the last gate wishes you a happy journey, so down you go another set (sorry, sets, you will easily do your required 3,000 steps a day) of stairs expecting to walk across to your plane: wrong again! A bus awaits you so as to make you wait until it is full, perhaps 15 minutes, 10 if you are lucky, and drives you out to the plane, where to your surprise there is actually a plane with a pilot and stewards, who have delayed the flight yet again, so that no poor and rather desperate soul is left behind. And this saga repeats itself the next day and so on. The flight arrives at its destination late, but you are satisfied that it would have taken longer, well just a bit, to walk all the way, or perhaps get a blah-blah car. In December I flew into Prague Airport and then was able to drive to Leipzig. Prague Airport has a different logistic system (it distributes the security check-in directly to the airline gate) and it works very well, but Prague is not generally practical for visitors to Berlin as the outward connections are not very good, but it does show how an airport can work fast and well. A simple change would be to not have the separate passport control (other airports do not have this two stage system), but the real change has to come by the airlines doing something on behalf of their passengers in what is effectively a monopoly system. I will not use Berlin Brandenburg again, until it recognises the daily chaos it causes and apologises to the thousands of passengers who have no alternative. If I could I would give this Airport a negative rating, but I cannot get the slider rating past 1 out of 10.