Then, the main terminal building comes into view - its statement entrance with huge expanses of glass and exits from a large railway station below emerging into a piazza in front. To one side stands a smart hotel.
As a structure, it looks impressive enough.
Until you pause, look around you, and absorb the silence. This is Berlin Brandenburg or BER, the new, state-of-the-art international airport built to mark reunified Germany's re-emergence as a global destination.
It is a bold new structure, costing billions, and was supposed to be completed in 2012.
But it has never opened.
BER has become for Germany not a new source of pride but a symbol of engineering catastrophe. It's what top global infrastructure expert Bent Flyvbjerg calls a "national trauma" and an ideal way "to learn how not to do things".
No passengers have ever emerged from the railway station, which is currently running only one "ghost train" a day, to keep the air moving.
No-one has stayed at the smart airport hotel, which has a skeleton staff forlornly dusting rooms and turning on taps to keep the water supply moving.
Enter the grand terminal building itself and the spooky atmosphere intensifies.
Huge luggage carousels are being given their daily rotation to stop them from seizing up.
There are several of them, designed to process constant arrivals.
Round and round they go, smooth - but pointless. They have never processed a single piece of real luggage.
Find out more
What has gone so wrong in a place supposed to be the capital of efficient engineering? Listen to Chris Bowlby's report The Berlin Airport Fiasco
Indicator boards show flights arriving and departing. But they are using data from other airports, elsewhere in Berlin.
Some of the boards tested since the airport was supposed to have opened have now had to be replaced, worn out without ever having shown a flight landing or taking off from here.
The company running the airport promises it will finally open next year, which would make it at least eight years late as well as billions over budget.
So what on Earth has happened in Germany, meant to be one of the world's leaders in efficiency and engineering?
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