Successful Point Merge Conference in Oslo

This week, Avinor Air Navigation Services invited ANSPs, airport operators and airlines to learn more and share experiences from implementation of the point merge system for arrival operations at airports.  

- Avinor has world leading competence in implementation of Point Merge operations. We were pleased to welcome the industry to share insights  from our experiences,  and learn more from other implementations across the globe, says managing director of Avinor Air Navigation Services, Anders Kirsebom. 

The conference highlighted experiences from developing and implementing the sequencing arrival flow method, giving participants a greater understanding of how Point Merge can provide relief to congested and strained capacity airports worldwide. 

Designing, training and implementing Point Merge
Today’s situation with radar vectoring makes for a heavy controller workload, a great deal of radio communication, diminution of pilot situational awareness, difficulty in predicting and improving vertical profiles and large dispersion at low altitudes.

Rather than using traditional holding stacks, the Point Merge system involves placing arriving aircraft onto defined equidistant arcs or tracks, from which they can make a continuous descent to the runway. Thereby, both the overall track miles flown by the aircraft and associated CO2 emissions can be reduced.

Leading competence at Avinor
Avinor Air Navigation Services was the first ANSP in the world to implement the Point Merge System in 2011. The arrival route system was originally developed by EUROCONTROL to improve and harmonize arrival operations.

The implementation of Point Merge for Oslo Airport Gardermoen was part of the comprehensive Oslo ASAP project (Advanced Sectorisation and Automation Project), and the point merge arrival route system facilitated for an increase in capacity at Oslo Airport Gardermoen. 

In November 2014, Avinor ANS implemented the Southern Norway Airspace Project (SNAP) with Point Merge arrival sequencing systems for three additional airports to improve capacity and flight safety in airspace in the south-western part of Norway. The project entailed development of new continuous decent operations and continuous climb operations at 16 airports, including Point Merge structures for the larger airports Sola, Flesland and Værnes.