First contrails report from Victor and 4Air urges action
(Photocredit: Shutterstock).
The global warming contribution from business aviation contrails has been revealed in new report published by charter broker Victor and sustainability specialist 4AIR. The inaugural Contrails Analysis Report also urges business aviation to modify flight plans to minimise contrails and airlines to publish similar studies.
The report claims 1% of contrails accounted for 48% of the global warming impact arising from 2,987 on demand private charter flights worldwide. The results highlight how a small number of high-impact contrails disproportionately contribute to climate effects and how remedial action could lead to significant improvements.
Defined as long, thin cloud formations forming behind high altitude aircraft, contrails are responsible for 1-2% of global warming. They can cause as much global warming each year as all the CO2 emitted by flights between 1945 and 2018, according to recent (and separate) research from the University of Cambridge Aviation Impact Accelerator. Both organisations want to highlight the CO2 and non-CO2 impact of business aviation on climate change while encouraging commercial airlines to publish their own contrail analysis reports.
Long-lasting or ‘big-hit’ contrails can have an outsized warming impact, trapping and absorbing heat that otherwise would radiate back into space. Research from the European Commission indicates that contrails and non-CO₂ emissions are responsible for about twice as much warming as the CO2 emitted by aviation.
‘Avoid contrail formation’
One misconception is that private jets fly above contrail regions but this report proves this isn’t always the case, warned Toby Edwards, co-CEO at Victor. “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,” he said.
Operators who are working on contrail avoidance using, already available, smart flight management software would be recommended to clients. “Such an offering would be a natural extension to our existing product, which includes aircraft estimate fuel-burn data and Neste sustainable aviation fuel [SAF],” said Edwards.
The results of this research support an earlier study conducted by 4AIR. This was also said to show the concentration of a majority of the contrail impact emerging from a small minority of flights, highlighting the opportunity to cut climate impact substantially by addressing just a fraction of flights.
4AIR, who used the open-source Contrail Cirrus Prediction model from Contrails.org and hindcast weather data plus ADSB data within a flight, shines the spotlight on the non-CO2 impact of Victor’s charter flights and highlights the alarming impact of contrails by the growing commercial airline sector, reinforcing calls to accelerate the deployment of known mitigation techniques that could quickly reduce these effects.
‘Very large opportunity’
Kennedy Ricci, president of 4AIR said the challenge of minimising the impact of contrails was not confined to business aviation. “Avoiding atmospheric regions likely to create big hit contrails represents a very large opportunity to reduce the impact from aviation,” he said. “But effectively mitigating these regions will require pro-active flight planning by operators as well as coordination with Air Traffic Control.”
It is critical to raise awareness of both the impact and opportunity of non-CO2 impacts and encourage operators to understand their contrail footprint, as aviation sector prepared to meet its climate goals, he added.
“By publishing this data voluntarily, Victor and 4AIR are calling on all airlines to increase transparency, improve flight-path planning and work with Air Traffic Control to reduce contrail-forming flights,” according to Victor and 4AIR. “This inaugural report represents a step toward greater accountability in aviation and will be published annually.” Read the full report here.
Meanwhile, read the our feature dedicated to contrails in our sister publication Corporate Jet Investor magazine.
