The "abandoned" new airport refers to the long-running saga of Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER), which sat largely finished but completely empty for nearly a decade. Originally scheduled to open in 2011, catastrophic failures in the fire safety and smoke exhaustion systems led to a series of delays that turned the site into a global laughingstock. For years, the lights stayed on and "ghost trains" ran to the empty basement station just to keep the tracks from rusting, even as the "brand new" monitors reached the end of their lifespan before a single passenger arrived. While BER finally opened in October 2020, the term "abandoned" is now more accurately associated with Berlin Tempelhof (THF). Decommissioned in 2008, Tempelhof is a massive Nazi-era terminal that has been preserved as a public park (Tempelhofer Feld). It remains a haunting "cathedral of aviation," where Berliners now use the former runways for kite-surfing and community gardening rather than international flight.