Berliners vote to keep Tegel airport open

Berlin residents voted to keep open the German capital's Tegel airport even after a new international hub is completed, creating a headache for the city's government, which had campaigned for its closure.

Some 56 percent of voters supported the non-binding referendum to reconsider plans to close Tegel and nearly 42 percent were opposed, the state election supervisor said, after all the votes had been counted.

Current plans envisage the closure of Tegel six months after the opening of Berlin Brandenburg International (BER) airport - a grand project bedeviled by repeated construction and planning problems that still has no fixed opening date.

The referendum, held on the same day as Germany's federal election, divided Berliners.

"Schoenefeld (airport) won't get finished, we've seen the whole fiasco. And what else have we got? Tempelhof got closed, now they want to close Tegel. Berlin the metropolis, is all I'm saying!!," Lydia a Berlin resident said.

"I think it should have been closed because it is an inner-city airport, it's better when airports are on the outskirts because a lot of people are pretty disturbed by the noise pollution," said Sophie Matiuzzo.

Although the vote was non-binding, Berlin's government will now be forced to review its plans to close Tegel or face accusations that it is going against the will of the people.