American Airlines has completed its first set of contrail avoidance flights, and the results are promising. American pilots flew 70 test flights over six months using Breakthrough Energy’s open-source contrail models and Google’s AI-based predictions. Satellite imagery shows the pilots reduced contrail formation by 54% by simply avoiding altitudes likely to create contrails.
The tests also showed the contrail avoidance flights only burned an additional 2% of fuel. Because recent studies show only a small percentage of flights would need to be adjusted to avoid the majority of contrail warming, researchers estimate the total fuel impact to be as low as 0.3% across an airline’s flights. 1 Google Research predicts contrail avoidance could be reached at scale for only $5-25/ton CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent).
Google has committed to continuing research and development to automate contrail avoidance, target avoiding contrails with the greatest warming impact, and improve satellite-based verification.
[1] AI Impact – https://blog.google/technology/ai/ai-airlines-contrails-climate-change/#footnote-2