Report Focuses on Aviation Contrail Climate Effects

A new report from aircraft charter broker Victor and industry sustainability solutions provider 4Air highlights the impact private jet contrails can have on the environment. Contrails are formed by jet engine emissions interacting with the proper combination of humidity and temperature in the upper atmosphere. Depending on the location and time of day, long-lasting contrails can have an “outsized warming impact, trapping and absorbing heat that would otherwise radiate back into space.”

Climatologists refer to the intensity of atmospheric warming in terms of effective radiative forcing (ERF), and according to a white paper from Contrails Org, the ERF from all aviation CO2 emissions from 1940 to 2019 is similar to the ERF caused by contrails alone in 2019.

Victor’s debut “Contrails Report,” the first of its kind from a private jet charter broker, analyzed nearly 3,000 flights and found that just 1% of contrails accounted for 48% of aviation’s total warming impact of those flights This demonstrates how a small number of high-impact contrails are disproportionately responsible for climate effects, and illustrates how change can be achieved by targeting specific flight profiles.

“One misconception is that private jets fly above contrail regions; our report proves this isn’t always the case,” said Victor co-CEO Toby Edwards. “We want our private jet clients to have the option to avoid contrail formation by choosing progressive operators that are proactively making small adjustments to their flight paths to avoid contrail-forming regions, thereby lowering their environmental impact.” For operators working on contrail avoidance, he recommends using readily available smart flight management software.

4Air president Kennedy Ricci noted that contrails are an aviation industry-wide concern, not limited to just business aviation, and one that will require proactive flight planning along with coordination from air traffic control. “Avoiding atmospheric regions likely to create big hit contrails represents a very large opportunity to reduce the impact from aviation.”

Both companies are now urging commercial airline sector members to publish their own contrail analysis reports.