North Atlantic Flights Rerouted to Reduce Contrail Warming Impact
Planes flying across the North Atlantic will soon be re-routed to avoid creating condensation trails, or contrails. Contrails are formed when soot particles from jet engines trigger ice particle formation, leaving a trail that can last for hours and trap heat.
The £5 million Operation Blue Skies project aims to reduce global warming caused by contrails in the Shanwick airspace on the eastern side of the North Atlantic. Researchers will use AI-generated forecasts from Google to predict where contrails will form and advise pilots to adjust their altitude accordingly.
Starting in November, around 10,000 flights are expected to pass through the airspace each year during the trial period. The project will run for two four-month winter trials over 2026-2027 and 2027-2028. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London will analyze the data.
The climate benefit of avoiding contrails is worth any extra fuel burn from shifting flight paths, according to Paul Hodgson at Google UK. Re-routed flights may have to burn an additional 100 kilograms of fuel per aircraft while crossing the airspace, resulting in an additional few hundred kilograms of CO2 emitted.