Vapour trails (contrails) from aircraft make a substantial contribution to aviation’s climate impact. Here we execute a per-flight contrail avoidance feasibility test through altitude adjustments based on contrail formation predictions. The avoidance regime resulted in a 64% reduction in satellite-visible contrails at a 2% increase in fuel burn per adjusted flight.
- Aaron Sonabend-W
- Carl Elkin
- John C. Platt
