Berlin Brandenburg Airport Terminal 1

Terminal 1 handles most of what arrives at Berlin Brandenburg. Arrivals are on level E0, and the railway station sits directly below, so the interchange between plane, train and car is vertical rather than a walk across a site.

It is also, quietly, the whole ground transport infrastructure of the airport. The taxi ranks on the north and south sides, the ride-hailing lane on the E0 approach, the short-term parking directly at the terminal driveways — all of it is at Terminal 1. Terminal 2 has none of it. That asymmetry is not obvious from a terminal map and it is the fact that catches people out here.

The forecourt gives ten free minutes. After that the first hour is €17 booked ahead or €23 at the barrier, which is steep enough that car parks P3, P7 and P8 are the better answer for anything longer than a wave.

Your driver waits inside the level E0 arrivals hall with a name sign, taken from your flight number. Berlin also signs a numbered set of meeting points in front of Terminal 1, and where a specific one is used it is named in your confirmation rather than left as "arrivals".

The reason we put the meeting inside rather than at a kerb is sharper here than elsewhere: with ten free minutes and a €23 hour behind them, a driver waiting at the barrier is a driver watching a clock. Yours should not be.

If your flight goes to Terminal 2 instead, the driver simply meets you there — but everyone leaving Terminal 2 by road ends up at Terminal 1 anyway, because Terminal 2 has no pickup lane of its own. The connection is a covered walkway of about ten minutes, or a free shuttle every five to ten. Worth knowing before you land, whoever is collecting you.