Chaotic days at BER: when the airport can't

A Berliner Zeitung feature prominent on 18 October 2026, 'Chaos-Tage am BER: Willkommen am Flughafen, der es nicht kann', describes a run of difficult days at Berlin-Brandenburg airport. The article points to delays and cancellations, hours-long baggage waits, slow border control and complaints from passengers who missed connections. A companion piece, 'Was die Wartezeit-Statistik am BER verschweigt', shows that although average security waits in the airport's own figures remain short, individual passengers can still stand 90 minutes rather than three because the statistic averages across many lanes and times of day. The paper argues that BER's communication and operational grip on peak autumn-holiday traffic has fallen behind what travellers expect of a capital airport, and that both the airport operator and the federal police screening contractor share responsibility. The pieces have been among the paper's most-read Berlin reads this week.