Evening bag drop at BER

At BER you can hand over your checked bag the evening before, but only with certain airlines and only within a narrow window in the early evening. The airport lists three such offers in Terminal 1: easyJet, Eurowings and the Lufthansa group.

If you use it, you walk to the terminal on the morning of departure with hand luggage only. That shifts the question when choosing a hotel: what matters is no longer only how quickly you reach the counter in the morning, but whether you can still get to the terminal and back between 5 and 9 pm the evening before.

Key takeaways

• easyJet accepts bags in Terminal 1 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm, for flights up to 9:30 am the next day.
• Eurowings accepts them from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, on Saturdays from 2:00 to 4:00 pm, for flights up to 12:00 noon the next day.
• Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, Lufthansa City and Brussels offer an evening check-in from 5:00 to 7:30 pm at counter area 421–426, no more than 23 hours before departure.
• This is not the same as Fast Bag Drop: the self-service counters in Terminal 1 are open daily from 3:30 am to 10:00 pm.

Airlines that take bags in the evening at BER

The airport lists these as services of the respective airline. Whether your particular flight is included is therefore decided by the carrier, not by the airport. For Eurowings, BER states explicitly that evening drop-off is not possible on some flights. Check your booking before you set out.

Evening drop-off and Fast Bag Drop are two different things

Fast Bag Drop is self-service on the day of travel: you print your boarding pass and bag tag at a machine and hand the bag over yourself. Terminal 1 has 99 machines, with 28 more kiosks in Terminal 2. The self-service counters in areas 511 to 516 are open daily from 3:30 am to 10:00 pm.

For a 6:00 am flight that means arriving before 3:30 am gains you nothing for checked luggage. Evening drop-off closes exactly that gap. It replaces the early trip to the counter, not security screening and not your airline’s boarding deadline.

What this means for choosing a hotel at BER

The evening trip is easiest from the two hotels right at Terminal 1. The Steigenberger Airport Hotel Berlin is about 50 m away, the IntercityHotel Berlin Airport BER Terminal 1+2 about 300 m. Both journeys take a few minutes and do not depend on a timetable.

From the hotels further out, the way back is the critical part. S-Bahn lines S9 and S85 each run every 20 minutes and cover the evening. The shuttle of the Moxy Berlin Airport runs until about 12:30 am. Local bus services are tighter: the last departures towards the terminal are in the early evening, and line 741 does not serve the terminal on Sundays. If you plan to reach the window from 6:00 pm by bus, check the last return departure in the VBB journey planner beforehand.

Also allow for the fact that you still have your suitcase in the room until the evening. An evening trip pays off mainly if you are staying at the airport anyway and the way is short.

Five points to check before you go

1. Does your airline offer evening drop-off for this particular flight?
2. Is your departure time within the airline’s limit, that is 9:30 am for easyJet and 12:00 noon for Eurowings?
3. Are you within 23 hours of departure if you fly with the Lufthansa group?
4. How do you get back from Terminal 1 in the evening, and when does the last service run?
5. What does the counter charge, and is the machine free of charge?

How early you really need to leave on the morning of departure is worked through in Early flight from BER. Which hotels offer a transfer is covered in BER hotels with a shuttle. For the routes to the airport, see Getting to BER.