4AIR: AIRCRAFT ROUTING CHANGES COULD REDUCE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Aviation sustainability solution leader 4AIR has found that small altitude adjustments on business aviation flights could have a substantial impact on reducing their contrail impact.

Although composed primarily of water in the form of ice crystals, contrails, in certain conditions can merge and spread over several miles, which can trap outgoing longwave radiation. Studies have estimated the overall net impact from contrails and non-CO2 emissions to be about twice that of CO2 alone, contributing to two-thirds of aviation’s total warming impact.

Encompassing over 16,000 flights and over 27,000 flight hours, the study (the largest flight-by-flight contrail footprint in business aviation) identified specific opportunities to mitigate contrails in order to reduce the impact of non- CO2 emissions. According to analysis, adjustments on 50 flights out of 16,888 would have reduced the non-CO2 impact by more than 50% overnight.

Kennedy Ricci, 4AIR President, concludes: “The results of this study demonstrate both the challenges and opportunities with reducing aviation’s footprint from contrails. Effectively reducing our contrail warming impact requires considering contrails on every flight, but successfully avoiding contrails on just a handful of flights would have a major impact, potentially without CO2 trade-offs.”