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arXiv · 2603.06909

Efficacy of Scalable Airline-led Contrail Avoidance

Tharun Sankar·Thomas Dean·Tristan Abbott·Jill Blickstein·Alejandra Martín Frías·Mark Galyen·Rebecca Grenham·Paul Hodgson·Kevin McCloskey·Alan Pechman·Tyler Robarge·Dinesh Sanekommu·Aaron Sarna·Aaron Sonabend-W·Marc Stettler·Raimund Zopp·Scott Geraedts
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Abstract

Contrails account for a large portion of aviation's contribution to anthropogenic climate change. Navigational contrail avoidance is a promising solution to mitigate the warming caused by contrails. Prior trials testing navigational contrail avoidance have relied on bespoke integrations of contrail forecasts into airline operations. Here, we use a randomized control trial to test the feasibility of dispatcher-led contrail avoidance integrated into standard flight planning operations using a workflow that scales to an airline's entire network. We validated the efficacy of this intervention using satellite imagery and an automated flight-contrail attribution algorithm. Using this system, we observed an 11.6% reduction in contrail formation rate for the 1232 flights marked as eligible for contrail avoidance (intent-to-treat) relative to the flights in the control group (p = 0.011). In the 112 flights that flew contrail avoidance as planned (per-protocol flights), we observed a 62.0% lower contrail formation rate relative to the flights in the control group (p < 0.001). No statistically significant difference in fuel usage was observed between the two groups.

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Tharun Sankar, Thomas Dean, Tristan Abbott, Jill Blickstein, Alejandra Martín Frías, Mark Galyen, Rebecca Grenham, Paul Hodgson, Kevin McCloskey, Alan Pechman, Tyler Robarge, Dinesh Sanekommu, Aaron Sarna, Aaron Sonabend-W, Marc Stettler, Raimund Zopp, Scott Geraedts. 2026-03-06. Efficacy of Scalable Airline-led Contrail Avoidance. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06909

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