Berlin Brandenburg is the capital’s single airport, 18 km south-east of the centre in Schönefeld. A private transfer meets you inside arrivals, tracks your flight, and goes door to door at a price fixed before you travel.
The price is agreed before you book. No meter, no surge pricing.
About the airport
BER replaced Tegel and Schönefeld and absorbed everything both of them used to do, which is why the geography surprises people who last flew to Berlin years ago. The airport is not in Berlin at all but in Brandenburg, 18 km south-east of the centre, reached by the A113 or the B96a. Tegel, which was famously close to the city, is gone — closed in 2020 — and nothing replaced its convenience.
Two terminals are in use. Terminal 1 is the main building, with the railway station directly beneath it. Terminal 2 has been open since March 2022 and handles low-cost carriers including Ryanair and Wizz Air; it is a short walk from Terminal 1 rather than a shuttle ride, which makes BER easier to be met at than its size suggests.
Terminal 5 — the old Schönefeld building — closed permanently in November 2022. It is not somewhere to be dropped off, whatever an old booking confirmation, a stale map or an out-of-date guide may still say. This is the single most common piece of misinformation about this airport and the one worth checking before you travel.
Berlin itself is the other half of the story. It is enormous and low-rise, roughly nine times the area of Paris with a fraction of the density, and it has no single centre — the government quarter, the main business districts, the university campuses and the tech offices are scattered across it. An airport journey here is far more likely to end somewhere other than Mitte than it would be in any other German city.
Getting to and from the airport
The station under Terminal 1 is served by regional trains and the S-Bahn, and for one person heading to central Berlin the Flughafenexpress is fast, cheap and hard to argue with — take it. It is a genuinely good connection and it runs frequently.
The argument for a car is Berlin’s shape rather than its centre. Most addresses are nowhere near a mainline station, and an S-Bahn journey to somewhere like Spandau, Pankow, Köpenick or the outer east turns into a change and then a tram, with your cases, at whatever hour you happen to land. Twenty minutes of train becomes an hour of journey remarkably easily here.
Timing is the second factor and it is specific to Terminal 2. Low-cost schedules push a lot of departures into the early morning and arrivals into the late evening, on both sides of the window in which a usable connection exists. A 05:30 check-in at BER means leaving central Berlin at a time the S-Bahn is not helping with, and the fare for a booked car does not change with the hour.
Where your driver meets you
Your driver waits in the arrivals area of Terminal 1 or Terminal 2 — whichever your flight lands at, taken from the flight number you give at booking — holding a name sign. The two terminals have separate arrivals areas but are a short walk apart, so a late gate change is a minor inconvenience here rather than a crisis. No pickup is arranged at Terminal 5, which has been closed since November 2022. Flights are tracked automatically and 60 minutes of free waiting after touchdown is included.
Fleet
Every class includes the same service — flight tracking, meet and greet, waiting time and a fixed price. What changes is the space.
Top of the range
3 passengers / 2 bags
Mercedes-Benz S-Class or similar
A flagship saloon — the long-wheelbase, rear-seat-first kind. Booked for board-level guests, client collection and the journeys where the car is part of the impression.
The default for work travel
3 passengers / 2 bags
Mercedes-Benz E-Class or similar
An executive saloon with room to work, quiet enough to take a call, and a boot built for checked luggage rather than weekend bags. The class most corporate accounts book by default.
The sensible one
3 passengers / 2 bags
Toyota Corolla Hybrid or similar
A clean, current saloon with a professional driver. Everything that matters — flight tracking, meet and greet, a fixed price — is included; you are simply not paying for a badge.
Groups and real luggage
7 passengers / 7 bags
Mercedes-Benz V-Class or similar
Seven seats, a boot that takes seven cases, and a sliding door that makes loading at the kerb straightforward. The class families and small teams actually need.
Up to sixteen
16 passengers / 16 bags
For conference groups, wedding parties and trade-fair teams moving together. Quoted as one fixed price for the whole group rather than per seat.
Routes
| Destination | Distance | Journey time | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zossen | 27 km | 28 min | €68 |
| Teltow | 28 km | 33 min | €70 |
| Tiergarten | 29 km | 33 min | €71 |
| Messe Berlin | 31 km | 36 min | €75 |
| Berlin Hauptbahnhof | 31 km | 39 min | €75 |
| Ludwigsfelde | 32 km | 26 min | €76 |
| Falkensee | 48 km | 1h | €102 |
| Potsdam | 50 km | 38 min | €105 |
| Hennigsdorf | 50 km | 55 min | €105 |
| Fürstenwalde/Spree | 51 km | 41 min | €107 |
| Schloss Sanssouci | 52 km | 42 min | €108 |
| Hohen Neuendorf | 53 km | 54 min | €110 |
| Bad Saarow | 54 km | 42 min | €111 |
| Strausberg | 58 km | 46 min | €118 |
| Luckenwalde | 59 km | 45 min | €119 |
| Oranienburg | 65 km | 1h 02 | €129 |
| Buckow | 68 km | 1h 01 | €134 |
| Bernau bei Berlin | 73 km | 47 min | €142 |
| Frankfurt an der Oder | 82 km | 59 min | €156 |
| Brandenburg | 89 km | 1h 04 | €167 |
| Eberswalde | 102 km | 1h 12 | €188 |
| Neuruppin | 105 km | 1h 25 | €193 |
| Cottbus | 107 km | 1h 13 | €196 |
| Wittenberg | 114 km | 1h 19 | €207 |
| Rheinsberg | 119 km | 1h 46 | €215 |
| Magdeburg Hauptbahnhof | 159 km | 1h 43 | €279 |
| Magdeburg | 161 km | 1h 44 | €283 |
| Dresden | 171 km | 1h 57 | €299 |
| Leipzig | 193 km | 2h 04 | €334 |
| Wolfsburg | 231 km | 2h 25 | €395 |
| Braunschweig | 239 km | 2h 31 | €407 |
| Chemnitz | 242 km | 2h 36 | €412 |
Prices shown are the starting fare for this route and include tolls and airport access charges. Your exact price is confirmed before you book.
City to city
Journeys that never touch the airport, priced the same way: a measured road distance between the two city centres and a fare fixed before you travel. Every one of these pages says plainly when the train is the better buy.
Straight answer
For one person with hand luggage going to Mitte, Kreuzberg or anywhere else near a main station, take the Flughafenexpress. It is quick, it is cheap, it runs often, and there is no honest argument for a car on that journey. Where that stops being true is the rest of Berlin — which, given how the city is laid out, is most of it. Spandau, Pankow, Köpenick, Potsdam and the outer districts all mean a change and usually a tram at the end. Book a car for those, for three or more passengers, for real luggage, and for the early Terminal 2 departures that leave before the network is useful.
At the other end
Berlin is bigger than it looks on a map and the things people come for are a long way apart — Charlottenburg to Friedrichshain is an hour on public transport with a change. That distance is the whole argument for a car here, and it is also why almost nobody manages the list below in a single day.
Five museums on one island in the Spree, on the UNESCO list as a group. The Pergamonmuseum has been partly closed for a long-running refurbishment, so check what is open before building a day around it.
Ten minutes apart. The Reichstag's glass dome is free to visit and you walk a spiral ramp up over the debating chamber, which is a deliberate piece of architecture rather than a view — registration is required and it fills up weeks ahead.
The longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, 1.3 km along the Spree in Friedrichshain, painted by artists in 1990 and repainted since. It is an open street, not a site — no ticket and no closing time.
The airfield that closed in 2008, now a public park with the runways left exactly where they were. People cycle, skate and fly kites down a 2 km strip of concrete in front of one of the largest buildings in Europe.
Business travel
Most of what a company needs from a transfer is not a discount — it is knowing the number before the journey, and knowing somebody will be standing there holding the right name. Both are how this service already works.
Name a colleague, a client or a candidate as the passenger and put your own address on the confirmation. The driver holds their name at arrivals; the booking, the changes and the receipt stay with you.
The fare is fixed before you book, so it goes into an approval or onto an expense claim as a known number rather than an estimate. Traffic on the day changes the journey, never the amount.
Flight tracking moves the pickup with the aircraft, and the driver waits inside arrivals with a name board rather than texting from a car park. Someone you are trying to impress should not have to find anybody.
A group that outgrows a van is quoted as the combination of vehicles that actually seats it, priced per car and confirmed as one booking — not turned away at the vehicle list.
If your company moves people through this airport more than occasionally, it is worth a conversation rather than a form. Tell us the routes and the volume and we will tell you plainly whether we are the right operator for it.
What is included
Agreed in full before you book. Traffic, tolls and airport charges are already in it — the meter does not exist.
We watch the flight number you give us. Land early or three hours late and the pickup moves with you, at no extra cost.
Your driver waits inside arrivals holding a name sign, helps with the luggage and walks you to the car.
Free waiting time after touchdown — enough for passport control and baggage reclaim without anyone watching a clock.
From the exact address to the exact address. Not to the nearest station, and not to a rank at the end of the road.
Infant, child and booster seats specified at booking. They are not charged as an extra.
Cancel up to 24 hours before pickup at no charge. Plans change; that is not something to be fined for.
Licensed, insured, English- and German-speaking, and briefed on your journey before they set off.
FAQ
Terminal 1 or Terminal 2, taken from the flight number you give at booking. The two are a short walk apart rather than a shuttle ride, but they have separate arrivals areas, so the meeting point is confirmed to you in advance.
No. Terminal 5, the former Schönefeld building, closed permanently in November 2022. All passenger traffic uses Terminals 1 and 2, and no pickup or drop-off is arranged at Terminal 5.
Not administratively — BER is at Schönefeld in the state of Brandenburg, about 18 km south-east of the city centre. It is the only commercial airport serving Berlin since Tegel closed in 2020, so in practice "the Berlin airport" and BER are the same thing.
60 minutes of free waiting time after touchdown, which covers passport control and baggage reclaim on a normal arrival. Flights are tracked from the number given at booking, so an early or late landing moves the pickup automatically.
Yes, each at its own fixed price. Potsdam is close to the airport by road and awkward by rail from it, and the lake district south and east of Berlin has very little scheduled service at all. Both are regular bookings, particularly in summer.
Yes, and it is one of the most common bookings here. A 06:00 flight from Terminal 2 means being at the airport around 04:30, which is before the S-Bahn is useful from most of Berlin. The fare is the same at that hour as at any other — there is no night surcharge.
Guides
It has its own German word — Flughafenwechsel — which tells you how routinely it happens.
All three have a railway station in or under the building. That is the honest starting point.
Germany runs the largest trade fair circuit in the world, and every stop on it has the same week-long transport failure.
At most of these airports the train wins. We would rather tell you which ones than sell you a car you do not need.
Uber exists here. It is a different product from the one on your phone at home, and the reason is a law rather than a business decision.
A shuttle is a shared bus on a timetable. Eight German airports have a real one — and at three of them you should take it.
Airports
Ready when you are
Two addresses, a date, and how many of you there are. You will see the price for every vehicle class before you commit to anything.
