With the opening date of Berlin Brandenburg postponed – currently it is set for 17 March 2013 – Jüling said customers are finding it tough to handle the increased volume of traffic through Berlin’s existing Tegel and Schönefeld airports.

For example, Lufthansa has stationed six more A320s at Tegel for intra-European flights; airberlin has increased its long-haul operations to New York, Miami, Abu Dhabi and Windhoek; and Hainan Airlines has increased the frequency of its services to Beijing to four times a week.

Jüling said: “TNT has moved from Tegel to Schönefeld so that all integrators are, as planned for Berlin, in our dedicated freighter area.”

In addition: “At Schönefeld North, we have renamed the existing cargo warehouse as Express Center to differentiate it from the new Berlin Midfield Cargo Center, which is especially for handling belly freight in transit from long-haul flights.”

The first module of the Express Center can also handle cargo charter flights, such as those operated by the German Red Cross, measures 4,000m² and has an annual capacity of 30,000 tonnes.

As for the Berlin Midfield Cargo Center, its first module has a handling area of 12.000m² with direct access to the apron, the facility can handle around 100,000 tonnes of cargo per year.