It was cloudy evening in on January 2nd 1967 when Pan American flight PA619 silently emerged into the dark clouds over Berlin. The short flight from Hamburg was almost on time when the air traffic controller cleared the Boeing 727 jet to intercept the final approach course for runway 27L. The flight in the northern corridor along NORTH ROUTE 1 over the Soviet sector of Eastern Germany was uneventful. When the captain lowered the landing gear the plane broke out of the clouds and the lights of Berlin were visible to the passengers and cockpit crew. The flight smoothly landed and taxied to the terminal.

It could have been very similar to this fictious description in the old days of the legendary Berlin Tempelhof airfield, from which the renowned architect Sir Norman Foster once said it was the mother of all modern airports