AI to help planes avoid climate-warming contrails above North Atlantic

The idea behind the trial is that if scientists can predict the areas of the atmosphere where contrails are likely to form, aircraft could avoid them.

Google will use satellite images and flight data to identify where planes have previously produced contrails.

This is then combined with weather patterns to forecast where the conditions for new contrails are likely to occur.

The information will be passed to NATS, where air traffic controllers can direct pilots to avoid those areas.

Rather than dramatically changing the route of a flight, the trial will mostly involve changing an aircraft’s altitude by around 2,000ft.

This is something which already happens routinely to avoid turbulence and bad weather so passengers are unlikely to notice.

Ian Jopson, director of sustainability at NATS, said it should be “pretty much business as usual using existing procedures for the operators on the North Atlantic”.

Testing will take place during selected evenings and nights in the winters of 2026-27 and 2027-28, when air traffic is lower.

Around 10,000 flights are expected to pass through the airspace during the trial periods, although only a fraction will need to change altitude specifically to avoid contrails.

The Department for Transport is providing £2.65m towards the programme, while Google is contributing £1.4m through AI research, engineering and computing infrastructure.

Aviation Minister Keir Mather said the project would test “small tweaks to flight paths over the Atlantic” which could help make flying cleaner.

“This is a world-first, and it’s British ingenuity leading the way,” he said.