“Boy, how you’ve grown!” I haven’t been able to get these words out of my head these past few days. It was my Auntie Ursel’s favourite sentence at family get-togethers, but fortunately I’m now past the age where you shoot up several centimetres a year.

In this case, it’s not about me anyway, but about the BBI. You see, we are in the middle of celebrating four years of construction on the site. The first sod was turned here on 5 September 2006. In those early days, all you could see here for miles around were fields, trees and sand and it took a while for that to change because the first job we did was on the earthworks for the underground BBI station.

By summer 2008, it was time to start building over ground and we set to work on the BBI terminal. I look back to those days with a special fondness because it was from then on that the terminal gradually rose, visible for all to see, from the ground where until then only the planners and architects had been able to envisage an airport.

When I look at our airport terminal today, with its six storeys and standing 32 metres high, I find it hard to believe just how time has flown since that first sod was turned. BBI, how you’ve grown! Auntie Ursel would be proud of me!

print version berlin-airport.de (Copyright Berliner Flughäfen)