Much-delayed Berlin airport a running joke

[BERLIN] The opening of a new international airport to serve Berlin is now two years overdue and counting - a multi-billion-euro planning disaster that's become a running joke in the German capital.

The planned June 3, 2012, inauguration of the new hub known as Berlin-Brandenburg Airport or BER was to replace two smaller airports, Tegel and Schoenefeld, vestiges of the city's Cold War division.

Both facilities are bursting at the seams amid a tourism boom in trendy Berlin and a sustained economic upturn in Germany.

So chaotic was the cancellation of the grand opening due to fundamental technical problems that the invitations for a giant party had already been sent out in their thousands.

Since then, the start of operations has been pushed back again and again, while the giant shell of a building now stands on the city's south-eastern outskirts as a growing mon…