AI helps airline pilots avoid areas that create polluting contrails

Contrails are created when soot from kerosene-burning engines clumps together with particles of water, forming ice. Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock

Aircraft contrails – or clouds of condensation behind planes – have been a familiar sight in skies across the world since the start of the jet age. However, a new experiment by Google and American Airlines suggests they could soon become much rarer, in a small but significant win that could assist the battle to cut aviation emissions.

Pilots flying using artificial intelligence models to choose different altitudes were able to reduce contrails by 54%, with further improvements expected, Google said in a blogpost on Tuesday night.