Flughafen Berlin Schönefeld SXF

Works well, as long as you're focused.
So yeah, the airport is functional. Security is quick, the gates are easy to access - you can be at your plane within 15 minutes of getting out of the train station.
The flip-side, there really isn't that much *in* the airport. It's tiny (tinier than Tegel!), and, well, it's tiny.
That said, if the weather is nice, you can hang out outside till your flight is about to board....

Hate this airport! One of the all time worst!

Not only the design and efficiency of this airport is piss poor... aka separated small non connected blocks of terminals. There is no where to sit as planes and passenger ratio is 5x over seats available. People just lounging on the floor squeezed in like homeless people sprawled on a bust metropolis. Where is the German engineering so widely boasted? Not here a pure hack without any design. Compare this airport to Seoul and you'll get the dichotomy.

One us forced to pay airport food prices for garbage just to get a seat. Arriving 2 hours early for international your suffer and pay the price with choice.

Consider the facilities of the crammed passenger for bathroom alone. But the restaurant inside is packed with people looking for a decent place to hangout before their flight.

I haven't even started on the air circulation... I think it's cooler outside than inside. No wonder I see people hangout out in the beer Garten restaurant and not wanting to go into this cramped space. Feeling crawling out of my claustrophobic feeling with so many people per sq meter.

Tough travel setup,

Landed here, took a bus to a train-since there were no taxis or Uber , and the train doesn't extend to the airport.

Flying out was also tough. While other airports are grappling with the desire for power outlets, this one needs to think about putting in something for people to wait comfortably-I think you call those things Chairs.

Few food choices. Focus is on the duty free shipping which seems to have the largest space.

Tip: check your hand luggage. It is more difficult to maneuver with rollaboards in this airport.

Firstly this airport is BER so I think a lot of the reviews are referring to the old airport that was an absolute joke TEGAL. The new airport is huge, took many years to build stood empty for 10 more years then had problems opening because it was closed for so long that everything got out of date and was over budget by several billion euros.

Berlin is the capital of Germany you know Germany that little country that produces all those high-tech things who's workers are the best in the world! Well the airport they had before was absolute shite but now they have this so I can happily say that it's a great upgrade although there are some strange little things that one would not expect from ze Germans!

Due to my thriftiness I decided to take the bus from Leipzig to the airport, the green Uber as I call it FLIXBUS. Nine euros can't be beat and drops you right off in a bus parking lot, which the driver had difficulty getting into because his card didn't work :-) mote on that later. I then followed the throngs of people to where I think I had to go , the signage was very small to T1 terminal one. What you will find in this airport are a lot of people walking in various directions scratching their heads it's actually quite funny when we first landed from Reykjavík we headed left down a long corridor then didn't realize that in the middle of the walk we had to take a right so we hit the end of the corridor and had to turn around and came back and took a left. Every passenger entering the airport is doing the same thing, classic, a long line of people walking around in circles like cattle and this is a multibillion dollar airport for the capital of Germany the world leader in blah blah blah.

The fun continued, there were two cars in our party and I got out OK but my family in the car behind got stuck in the parking lot for half an hour as the ticketing system was kaput and the boom wouldn't open!

Getting back to my leaving Germany, once I realized I had to go to the second floor where all the Check in desks for the airlines are, it was easy Peezy. Going through security is a breeze you know how it is in Europe everybody is chill they're not some US Marine that has come back from his combat mission in Afghanistan and wants to give you an anal probe. You enter the main departure lounge through a gift store and it's very impressive large number of stores and nice places to eat etc.

One negative in getting there is that the regular trains as in the large heavy machines that run on tracks don't actually go to the airport, what goes to the airport is more like a tram a very nice tram so if you're going to use a train to get to the airport you have to go to the main downtown busy Berlin railroad station and then get the S Bahn as it's called to this. Hence the reason why I took the green Uber versus the train from Leipzig.


So it seems strange giving a five star review but did you go to that other little Berlin airport in the past, I swear to god it was like some airport you'd find in Montana, everybody was sitting on the floor, you had to go through a labyrinth of passages to get to your flight and it literally was 1/30 the size of BER and you had to take some bloody bus to your plane that was out on the tarmac like in the 70s when flying out of Nairobi.

So all hail BER it's a great airport let's hope they can get the parking systems worked out!

Decent experience here no issues with getting through security in terms of time we did get here 3hrs early so I'm sure that played a major role in our check-in process. The train and bus stations are attached to the airport so a short walk will lead you to the U which you can use to get to various locations. Note: If this is your 1st time using the S Bahn please make sure to validate your tickets as you will be subjected to a fine and removal off of the train. My wife and I learned this the hard way.

Easy to navigate. Broken down in to smaller sections. Getting around was au one and clearly marked
Negatives were that we had to stand on an non air conditioned jet way as we deplaned as the immigration desk was immediately as you deplaned. We only found one club and it had seating for about only 40 or so people. There is no A/C anywhere is the public areas and very little seating. Navigating the hallways is problematic due to people sitting all over the floor

TL;DR - Better than it was, still not good.

Schönefeld has improved since I last reviewed it, but it's still pretty awful.

The good: transport connections with the rest of Berlin remain fantastic with the nearby U-Bahn and S-Bahn. There's also now Terminal D which is clean and modern.

If you've only got hand luggage and have checked in you can use Terminal C to go through security which (hopefully) should cut some of the queues.

But once you're through the other side, the airport remains as small and congested as ever. Bottles of water cost nearly €3 which is ridiculous. Also, all the terminals are connected one you're through security, so you can wander around the whole airport... although 90% of it is basically just a corridor.

If you head to the Terminal D end it's a bit better - there's a cafe and seating and OPEN SPACE which is a revelation. But there's still not much there.

Also, take note that when you go through to the gate before boarding your place, most gates don't have toilets so empty that bladder beforehand!

This is another airport in Berlin. Funny fact is that both of the airport in Berlin. They are really small. You might saw the SXF writing on and different people's luggage in different countries. But it isn't one of the big and grand airport you can imagine. I do find it somehow convenient through. Because it doesn't have that much space, so the "Check Out" process pretty fast. "Check in" is another case. Compared with the Tegel airport, I found this airport a bit bigger, I could be wrong.

You can also find the bus to the nearest -Bahn station. Not something fancy but it does help you get to the city. Sometime it take less time to get here with the bus than the train, because of it usually delay.

But at the end of the day, for the modern day, the airport is abit out of date. It lacked of many things compared with capital airports in other countries. Well, at least they offer free internet through. The new airport is going on and on for a really long time. Hopefully, it will be done soon. Then Berlin has a new look to welcome the guest from other countries or cities.

This was a budget airport in the sense it's meant for budget airlines. There were constructions going on so that should improve the experience in the future. Good thing is the small size helps when you're transferring between gates or have quick access to Baggage Claim.

If arriving for the first time try to have low expectations and you may find it's a decent airport. If using it often I can see how it can be miserable. Speaking of miserable, that term is better reserved for going through many airports in a Third World (sometimes in a major city or even capital).

Berlin Schönefeld Airport (SXF) is one of the worst airports I've flown from, it is the smaller out of the two airports serving the German capital and this airport is now on borrowed time, with a new airport adjacent to this one opening within the next year or two, but still this airport is set to be used for discount and low-cost airlines until 2023 such as Ryanair and Easyjet, and I can't help but make the prediction which a few other reviewers have made, that I'm sure this will continue as being a hub for low cost airlines.

It is located in East Berlin, which of course was the sector of the city which the Communists / Soviet Union controlled before unification.

After going through security, all the terminals A/B/C/D seem to merge, but there basically isn't much in a few of them, other than a Burger King, two branches of Quickers, and a Relay and a very poor and small Irish Pub.

I struggled to find anywhere across the airport to get something to eat for my gluten free dietary requirements, and overall there was a poor selection of finding anything, meaning if you arrive anything over the bare minimum of 2 hours before which Ryanair recommended to me, you basically are going to be stuck basically in the middle of nowhere.

This airport is also badly located, being in East Berlin, it is a longer journey and hence more costly in a taxi from central Berlin compared to the larger, and more modern Berlin Tegel Airport.

There is a train station within walking distance of the airport, but yet again connections aren't as easy as it would be to Tegel Airport, which has a larger selection of buses and cheaper taxis due to the location, being slightly closer into Berlin.

The staff at the airport seemed quite fast, with the assistance staff being really friendly and much quicker than I have experienced at any other airport, which is probably the only highlight of this airport but I suppose this airport is so bad, people do want to get the hell out of there as soon as humanly possible.

Due to the dated nature of the Airport and all other factors mentioned, I really feel this is an airport to avoid, even if it means spending a slightly higher price on your flight tickets when going to Berlin, supported by an awful flight experience from Ryanair, I wish I would have flown with another airline from Berlin now, but sadly Easyjet also use this airport so there would be no direct flights from this airport to the likes of Manchester and Liverpool, hence I was basically forced to use this airport on this occasion as I certainly didn't want to spend perhaps double the price to fly with Swiss Air, which would have taken more than double the length of the flight I used on this occasion, including a stop in Zurich of nearly 2 and a half hours.