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Autori principali: Sankar, Tharun, Dean, Thomas, Abbott, Tristan, Blickstein, Jill, Frías, Alejandra Martín, Galyen, Mark, Grenham, Rebecca, Hodgson, Paul, McCloskey, Kevin, Pechman, Alan, Robarge, Tyler, Sanekommu, Dinesh, Sarna, Aaron, Sonabend-W, Aaron, Stettler, Marc, Zopp, Raimund, Geraedts, Scott
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06909
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author Sankar, Tharun
Dean, Thomas
Abbott, Tristan
Blickstein, Jill
Frías, Alejandra Martín
Galyen, Mark
Grenham, Rebecca
Hodgson, Paul
McCloskey, Kevin
Pechman, Alan
Robarge, Tyler
Sanekommu, Dinesh
Sarna, Aaron
Sonabend-W, Aaron
Stettler, Marc
Zopp, Raimund
Geraedts, Scott
author_facet Sankar, Tharun
Dean, Thomas
Abbott, Tristan
Blickstein, Jill
Frías, Alejandra Martín
Galyen, Mark
Grenham, Rebecca
Hodgson, Paul
McCloskey, Kevin
Pechman, Alan
Robarge, Tyler
Sanekommu, Dinesh
Sarna, Aaron
Sonabend-W, Aaron
Stettler, Marc
Zopp, Raimund
Geraedts, Scott
contents 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.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_06909
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Efficacy of Scalable Airline-led Contrail Avoidance
Sankar, Tharun
Dean, Thomas
Abbott, Tristan
Blickstein, Jill
Frías, Alejandra Martín
Galyen, Mark
Grenham, Rebecca
Hodgson, Paul
McCloskey, Kevin
Pechman, Alan
Robarge, Tyler
Sanekommu, Dinesh
Sarna, Aaron
Sonabend-W, Aaron
Stettler, Marc
Zopp, Raimund
Geraedts, Scott
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
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.
title Efficacy of Scalable Airline-led Contrail Avoidance
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06909