4AIR Business Aviation Analysis Finds Small Changes to Aircraft Routings Could Reduce Environmental Impact
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.
- 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.
- The study, the largest flight-by-flight contrail footprint in business aviation, encompassed over 16,000 flights and over 27,000 flight hours and identified specific opportunities to mitigate contrails in order to reduce the impact from non-CO2 emissions.
- According to the analysis, adjustments on just 50 flights out of 16,888 would have reduced the non-CO2 impact from this sample by more than 50% overnight.
- Of the 23 flights with the highest contrail impact, accounting for around 35% of the total contrail impact, 65% of the flights could have avoided or minimized their impact by flying higher, resulting in reductions of the CO2 and contrail impact.