At midnight (Coordinated Universal Time) on May 16, the air traffic control of Lisbon, which includes Cascais and the military bases of Montijo, Sintra and Alverca, will be carried out with a new tool -- the Point Merge System -- an investment that amounts to almost two million euros and that will allow a more efficient management of traffic, fuel savings, reduction of pollutant emissions and noise, as explained by the chairman of the Board of Directors of NAV Portugal, Pedro Ângelo, and the director of Aeronautical Procedures, Rui Marçal, in a meeting with journalists.

Due to the increase in traffic and in view of the growing environmental demands, NAV began in 2016 the largest restructuring of airspace that it had ever done and, later, in a Resolution of the Council of Ministers (RCM) of June 2019, it was mandated by the government led by António Costa to sign an Operating Charter with the Air Force, for the transfer of airspace from Sintra, in order to make the operationalisation of Point Merge viable from April 23, 2020.

However, the officials explained, the covid-19 pandemic changed the expected deadlines and only now are the conditions met for the implementation of the new system (PMS, in the English acronym), after almost five years of negotiations with the Air Force for the transfer of military airspace to civil aviation, especially in Sintra but also in Monte Real, in the municipality of Leiria.

PMS is a sequencing system for approaching airports, in which, in the event of traffic accumulation, the aircraft waiting for their turn to land are lined up in two arcs and directed to a landing sequence from these arcs, at a constant speed.

In the model used until now, aircraft have to make circular waits around the same point and, when they are authorized to land, a step-by-step descent procedure is followed, which is demanding from the point of view of communication between air traffic control and the pilots.

By replacing the circular waits with linear waits at a higher altitude, a more efficient, organized and safe management of air traffic is allowed, contributing to greater fuel savings, a reduction in pollutant emissions and the impact of noise on populations.

Additionally, with the transfer of military airspace from Sintra, which even included the transfer of the piloting school to Beja, it is now possible to take off to the West (Azores, or USA), which was impossible until now, allowing airlines to save travel time and fuel.

According to the 2019 RCM, the Air Force was authorized to spend on the acquisition of goods and services associated with the necessary transfers up to a maximum amount of 18.8 million euros, plus VAT.

Although they expect the new system to contribute to the reduction of delays at Lisbon airport, NAV officials stressed that this does not depend only on airspace, but mainly on infrastructure, emphasizing that, in 2023, the contribution of air traffic control to flight delays was 10%.

PMS was only tested for Lisbon and was being worked on at a time when a dual airport solution with Portela + Montijo was envisaged, in order to gradually increase the capacity of the Lisbon airport system from 44 to 72 movements per hour (46 in Lisbon, two in Cascais and 24 in Montijo).

The Montijo location was, however, considered unfeasible by the Independent Technical Commission (CTI) responsible for the strategic environmental assessment of the new airport, which recommended a single solution in Alcochete or Vendas Novas, but pointed out that Humberto Delgado + Santarém "may be a provisional solution".

Even before becoming prime minister, the social democrat leader, Luís Montenegro, had guaranteed that the decision on the new airport would be taken "in the first days" of his government.

Read Also: New Airport. Santarém wants a survey of costs before the decision (Portuguese version)