Berlin's awful setup results in delays across the region, it's no wonder other airports are reluctant to link there and divert to Frankfurt instead.

This allows you to arrive at almost the exact moment the gate closes because there will be no passengers for other flights in a queue with you. The gate agents can even see you going through security and will wait for a minute or so.

I still like Tegel a lot, as it's very close to the West center of the city.

My worst airport experience has been trying (and failing, twice; on consecutive days) to fly from Tegel Terminal C to Helsinki (EasyJet). My best airport experiences have been flying from Tegel Terminal A (Finnair) to Helsinki.

Unlike Tegel, though, the gate area and the screening areas are open spaces, with glass to separate. Tegel always feels a bit claustrophobic, and as a jet-lagged traveller my first time departing, I admit it took awhile for me to figure out where the hell I needed to go.

source: https://www.changiairport.com/en/airport-guide/departing/sec...

Quite frankly New York has a similar problem. There is rail service to JFK but requires an extra cost ticket and it's a fairly long trip (moreso if you're taking the subway instead of LIRR). I'd be willing to take a bus if it got me there quicker for less money. Yeah, Newark has rail (but it doesn't run particularly late).

It won't get you there quicker. A hypothetical non-stop direct bus route from most places in Manhattan to JFK would take around an hour under ideal conditions, about the same as the train already does. And in non-ideal conditions (around rush hour) and with multiple stops along the route, you would be looking at something like 2 hours, and worse on bad days.

There's a big caveat though: from Midtown. Getting to JFK from elsewhere in Queens (or e.g. Brooklyn) is a pretty circuitous route on the train. A bus could easily do that in less than two hours. On a good day a subway ride into Manhattan might take you half an hour. On a bad day…

I mean, look, I prefer rail, but not by so much that I'd ding Tegel (or Oakland) for not having rail connections. In Oakland the rail connector cost about half a billion dollars and required undoing a bunch of landscaping and road improvements. In the context of Berlin where you're talking about the Brandenberg airport being over budget and oft delayed, I simply don't see Tegel's transit connections as being shameful (or particularly bad).

For a single trip ticket, that sounds about right. If you're going to take any other trips that day a day ticket makes more sense and I think the difference is a bit larger.

The Airport Express can get you from Alexanderplatz to Schönefeld in 20 mins, it takes almost twice that to get to Tegel.

The TXL bus takes about twenty minutes from the Hauptbahnhof, and Alexanderplatz is three stops away on the S-Bahn (saving about ten minutes). Transiting to/from the Hbf gives you some extra transit connections as well. And as an added bonus, the TXL bus pretty much drops you at the gate.

Instead of using some sort of announcement system employees would just yell at people at German, so once I had to yell back at them to speak English.

Just 2 things to remember from Tegel, by far the worst airport I've ever been to.

It turns out the airport hadn’t assigned a crew to unload the plane, and Lufthansa sent an entire plane’s worth of checked luggage to Reykjavik. Cue the whole plane having to be processed through lost luggage. That’s was a long day.

That seems odd. Would a German do the same in the US?

It's among the worst airports, but still my favourite. Super fast public transport from center, with a cheap ticket, and fast security throughput. I need to reserve much less extra time for Tegel than any other airport, and side expenses never exceed the price of the flight itself (which can easily happen at many other European airports).