Berliners weigh in on closure of historic airport

BERLIN—A referendum attempting to save historic Tempelhof airport -- the Cold War-era hub of the Berlin Airlift -- failed on Sunday.

Not enough people cast ballots in a referendum, the city's first, to make it valid.

Preliminary results released by the Berlin state election authority showed the majority of the 530,231 ballots cast were in favor of keeping the airport open. But they accounted for only 21.7 percent of the 2.4 million eligible voters, short of the 25 percent needed for the vote to count.

Tempelhof, built in 1923, has the capacity to accommodate 1.5 million passengers annually, but actual traffic in 2007 was 350,000 -- a tiny fraction of the 20 million who used Berlin's three airports last year.

The city government plans to close Tempelhof in October as part of plans for a large central airport southeast of the German capital.

The airport's backers have been appealing to Berliners' emotions to keep open Tempelhof, the hub of the Berlin Airlift where the Allies supplied the city with food and fuel from June 1948 to May 1949 during a Soviet blockade.

Mayor Klaus Wowereit has said he would ignore the outcome of Sunday's nonbinding referendum.