(AP) Aircraft makers and airline pilots are getting their first taste of Berlin’s new airport a year before the much-delayed prestige project on the outskirts of the German capital is now due to open.

Exhibitors at the ILA Berlin Air Show have been granted special permission to use one runway of the new Willy Brandt airport, whose scheduled opening has been postponed from June of this year to Oct. 27, 2013. The cost of the project has doubled to more-than €4 billion ($5.1 billion).

Organizers expect more-than 200,000 visitors to come to the world’s longest-running air show — the third biggest in Europe after Paris and Farnborough — through Sunday.

Among the exhibitors displaying their latest models Tuesday was Boeing’s commercial division, which returned to Berlin after a 10-year absence.

SOURCE AP