With the IC line 17, Deutsche Bahn connects the future Berlin Brandenburg Airport with East Germany and is doing a lot right. The ultra-modern train strengthens Berlin’s airport location. A test drive.
© airliners.de / Andreas Sebayang Long-distance airport trains are known in German air traffic especially at the Frankfurt am Main hub. There is a long-distance train station with four tracks and a direct connection to high-speed traffic. Many trains even run to the station as codeshare for Lufthansa. Düsseldorf, Cologne / Bonn and Leipzig / Halle also have long-distance rail connections. Berlin doesn’t quite keep up with that. But Schönefeld has had a long-distance train station for a very long time, only long-distance traffic was not available for many years. That changed with the introduction of IC line 17: airliners.de tested the BER feeder train. Line 17 connects three important locations directly with Schönefeld Airport every two hours. From the opening of BER, Terminal 1/2 will even be served directly. Warnemünde, an important location for the cruise industry, is one of the direct destinations. Cruise companies like to market the one on the Baltic coast as “Berlin”. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s largest city Rostock is also on the way from the north.