Falcon 20E Tails German Airliners to Assess Contrails

Germany’s DLR Aerospace Research Center has deployed a Dassault Falcon 20E aircraft to monitor contrail formation in European airspace. On Wednesday, the agency reported that the specially equipped jet has been following airliners operated by German carrier TUIfly.

The exercise is part of the European Union-backed A4Climate project, which involves 17 other partners from 9 countries, including Austrian flight planning group Flightkeys, which is helping DLR to gather data. The project will analyze 400 scheduled flights that have been selected on the expectation that they will generate few contrails as part of an effort to understand how the condensation from jet engines can be minimized.

The researchers are combining data gathered from the flights with other measurements taken from the ground. Satellite data will be used to verify the patterns identified.

DLR has acknowledged that it is hard to adhere to optimum routes that would reduce contrails because of operational factors including weather and flight delays. The A4Climate team are also addressing how new aircraft engines and alternative fuels could also contribute to contrail mitigation. They are looking at how soot and volatile particles in the exhaust plume can change over periods of up to 30 minutes and what this means for the condensation that results in contrails.

Over the two-week flight campaign that started this week, DLR’s Falcon is largely tracking TUIfly services from Germany to Egypt. The business jet, which is based at the agency’s Oberpfaffenhofen facility near Munich, flies around 10 kilometers (6 miles) behind the airliners to take measurements in its wake.