Point Merge operations at Tân Sơn Nhất started officially on 10 October 2019 as part of a TMA (Terminal Manoeuvring Area) redesign project begun in December 2016 to help the airport deal with higher traffic levels.
A month later, on 7 November 2019, Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport (UACC), at the capital, Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana), the second largest airport in Kazakhstan, followed suit.
Both airports can now take advantage of Point Merge’s innovative way of sequencing arrival flows. Developed by the EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre, it improves safety, lightens the controller’s workload and increases capacity in terminal sectors, even with high traffic pressure.
Point Merge helps controllers by:
- simplifying tasks
- providing a better view of arrival sequences
- reducing communications and workload.
At the same time, pilots are able to benefit from improved situational awareness.
An important added benefit is that Point Merge helps reduce the airport’s environmental impact by making traffic flows more orderly and through supporting CDOs (continuous descent operations), so reducing noise and fuel burn.
First deployed in Oslo and Dublin, the new method quickly spread beyond the ECAC area.
