Germany has a hard-earned reputation for precision engineering and punctuality, but Berlin’s long-delayed Brandenburg Airport (BER) is besmirching that good name and turning the capital into a laughing stock.

Originally scheduled to open in October 2011, the much-maligned airport has been beset by delays and is now running €5 billion (£4.37bn) over budget, according to German media.

There are lost of workmen at BER, but no planes Credit: GETTY

Half a dozen dates have been given for the grand opening – October 2011, June 2012, March 2013, October 2013 and June 2017 – but so far all have been missed. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is now scheduled for an as-yet-unknown date in 2018 – seven years after the airport was supposed to open – but nobody is holding their breath.

So where has it all gone wrong?

Well, problems first started to arise in 2012 when an opening ceremony – due to be attended by Angela Merkel and 10,000 guests – had to be cancelled with just a few days notice due to a fault with the fire alarms and smoke extractors.

However, that turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg, because since then the airport has been waylaid by a catalogue of major technical faults.

A sign leads the way to the terminal to nowhere Credit: GETTY

According to Deutsche Welle (DW), 90km of cables were incorrectly installed, 4,000 doors were incorrectly numbered, the escalators were too short and the emergency line to the fire department was faulty. It has also been reported that the airport’s roof was twice the authorised weight.

That’s not all. There have been allegations of corruption – DW claims the airport’s planner-in-chief was “not an engineer but an imposter” – and worrying claims that a whistleblower at the airport was poisoned. This has not been proven.

Heads have rolled. The former Berlin mayor, Klaus Wowereit, who famously described his city as “poor but sexy”, was forced to resign from his post, in part because of the airport fiasco.

Meanwhile, construction companies, taxi firms and shops have gone into bankruptcy due to the ongoing delays, which, DW claims, are costing the taxpayer €1 million (£870,000) a day.

Although the airport remains shut, the runway is occasionally used by neighbouring Schoenefeld airport. BER was earmarked to replace Schoenefeld and Tegel, but given the continued delays those airports seem unlikely to be superseded anytime soon.

Berliners have become the butt of many jokes in Germany due to the BER debacle. The latest laser-guided put down came from the football club, Darmstadt, whose loss to Hertha Berlin in May sent them crashing down to the league below. However, Darmstadt had the last laugh.

“We landed in League 2,” said the team on Twitter. “But you are still landing at Tegel”.