About the exercise

During operational exercises improved point merge procedures in a complex TMA were validated. The procedures relied on better exploitation of the Flight Management System (FMS) allowing less radar vectoring and constrained by controller instructions on speed and level. The improved procedures built on P-RNAV and continuous descent approaches.

Results

The exercises demonstrated that point merge procedures work more effectively, and provide a potential capacity increase, when used with an effective arrival manager. Like this, the runway throughput can be improved and fewer holdings are necessary. Consequently, a reduction of fuel burn for departure and some arrival traffic was observed.