The chairman of the company's Board of Directors said that this improvement "which had a lot of impact and was very significant” is due to the implementation at Humberto Delgado Airport, in Lisbon, of the 'Point Merge System' system.

In practice, he indicated, this system allows “to eliminate circular waiting in the Lisbon terminal area and proceed with waiting in an arc in a linear way, in which there is greater predictability for those flying the aircraft”.

The data, which “is monitored by Eurocontrol, an independent reputable entity”, shows that over the “three summer months”, there were “significant improvements”, thanks to “this new approach technique” to the airport.

“In the month of July, compared to the same month the previous year, we have 27% fewer minutes of delay”, while, “in the month of August, [there are] 58% fewer minutes of delay and, in the month of September, 49 fewer % of minutes delay” in accessing the Lisbon airport terminal, he specified.

According to a table presented by the president of NAV, in July this year there were 39,340 minutes of delays accumulated in the month, while, in July 2023, this value reached 53,642 minutes (a reduction of 27%).

In August last year, NAV recorded 61,677 minutes of accumulated delays in air traffic in Lisbon, with this number falling to 25,747 minutes in August this year (-58%).

In September, there were 39,679 minutes of delays accumulated in the month, which represents the already mentioned drop of 49% (in September 2023 there were 77,261), according to the same table.

The ‘Point Merge System’ is a technique that “had been worked on within the company for some years and was identified as a significant improvement for the operation”, explained the head of NAV.

“This is a technique already used in other European airports, which was developed by Eurocontrol, with whom we worked together”, and the expectation was that “it would allow great gains in efficiency and reduction of delays, in addition to marginally also allowing capacity increases,” he said.