BERLIN: The opening of a new international airport to serve Berlin is now two years overdue and counting -- a multi-billion-euro planning disaster that's become a running joke in the German capital.
The planned June 3, 2012 inauguration of the new hub known as BER was to replace two smaller airports, Tegel and Schoenefeld, vestiges of the city's Cold War division.
Both facilities are bursting at the seams amid a tourism boom in trendy Berlin and a sustained economic upturn in Germany.
So chaotic was the cancellation of the grand opening due to fundamental technical problems that the invitations for a giant party had already been sent out in their thousands.
Since then, the start of operations has been pushed back again and again, while the giant shell of a building now stands on the city's southeastern outskirts as a growing money pit.
Red-faced officials in Berlin and neighbouring state Brandenburg, which share responsibility for the site, have refused to commit to a new opening date for fear of further embarrassment.
But their cagey stance has not spared them ridicule. Satire programme Heute Show on national public broadcaster ZDF has practically dedicated a segment to the spiralling fiasco.
In one sketch, a pseudo-serious news reader suggested renaming the facility "Tebartz van Elst Airport" after Germany's "bling bishop" who was forced to resign in March over enormous cost overruns for the renovation of his official residence.
Another joke has become a top-selling postcard featuring a picture of former East German leader Walter Ulbricht and his notorious pledge a few months before the Berlin Wall went up in 1961: "No one has any intention of building a wall". But "wall" has been replaced by "airport".
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