BERLIN, Nov. 22 (Reuters) – Berlin plans to become one of Europe's ten busiest airports and take traffic away from rivals by replacing its existing airports with one main hub, the chief executive of Berlin Airports told Reuters.

The new airport, Berlin Brandenburg International (BBI), will replace the city's Schoenefeld, Tegel and Tempelhof airports once it becomes operational in November 2011, becoming a transit hub but also the sole option for air travellers to the area.

Some other cities, including London, believe their airports perform better when competing against each other but BBI's head Rainer Schwarz said pooling its traffic in one site would strengthen its position as well as serve passengers better.

''Airlines would argue against it but we believe this give an airport the power to address the needs of its passengers,'' Schwarz said in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Airport Development 2009 conference in Berlin.

The airport has secured a catchment area of 100 kilometers, encompassing ten million people, in which no new airport can be built. It will start with a capacity of 27 million passengers per year that could be upgraded up to 45 million.

''Milan for example made a mistake when it did not close its old airport while opening a new one because traffic was too separated,'' Schwarz said.

Combined across its existing sites, Berlin Airports would rank third in Germany and fifteenth in Europe in terms of traffic. However, in 2008 the city outperformed all its biggest rivals in traffic growth.

BBI, co-owned by the states of Berlin and Brandenburg and the Federal Republic of Germany, aims to attract both low-cost carriers and long-haul flights, Schwarz said.

Lufthansa, Air Berlin and EasyJet are the main customers at the moment with a market share of around 70 percent of the around 21 million passengers that go through the city's airports every year, Schwarz said.

Spanning the equivalent of 2,000 football pitches, Schwarz said BBI is Europe's largest airport construction site. The building project, currently more than halfway through, involves 350 contracts and more than 1,000 companies.