Building new airports (or expanding them) seems to be a lot like building new nuclear power plants. Ridiculously expensive, plagued by endless delays and more political than anyone is prepared for. The Berlin Brandenburg Airport is a wonderful example of that: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/the-crazy-saga-of-ber...
> The Berlin Brandenburg Airport is a wonderful example of that
BER has always been a program to transfer as much cash as possible into the private sector. The profit the building companies siphoned off (and will keep siphoning off!) is enormous.
Unfortunately the city of Berlin has had to slash staff numbers in the last decades, so there is no in-house expertise to oversee that project... and external consultants don't have any incentive to actually do their job so the client has a benefit. They will want to drag out the BER build as long as possible, same as the building contractors.
I don't know, Moscow upgraded its 3 airports in the last 10-15 years as well as opened a new one. You would imagine that everything left over from Soviet times needed a massive overhaul.
Maybe the difference is whether you really need an airport, or when it is second to having a big public project to sink costs into?
