{
  "id": 1675309,
  "title": "Planes flying over the Atlantic will be re-routed to avoid contrails",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/18/planes-flying-over-the-atlantic-will-be-re-routed-to-avoid-contrails",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-18T09:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "New Scientist",
    "slug": "new-scientist",
    "url": "https://www.newscientist.com/article/2585091-planes-flying-over-the-atlantic-will-be-re-routed-to-avoid-contrails/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Starting later this year, planes flying over the North Atlantic will be rerouted to avoid forming contrails, a first-of-its-kind experiment aimed at mitigating the aviation sector's contribution to global warming. The Shanwick airspace, a busy corridor on the eastern side of the North Atlantic, will serve as the trial site, managed by air traffic controllers who will utilize AI-generated weather forecasts from Google to determine optimal altitudes that minimize contrail formation. Contrails, formed by ice particles created from soot particles in jet engines, have a warming effect on the planet, accounting for roughly one-third of aviation's climate impact. The trial, spanning two four-month periods in 2026-2027 and 2027-2028, will involve rerouting around 10,000 flights annually, with hundreds of flights needing to be redirected to generate a statistically significant data set. While re-routing may lead to an additional 100 kilograms of fuel burn per aircraft, the contrail impact, particularly during winter months, is significantly more detrimental, potentially amounting to tens of tonnes of CO2 emissions.",
  "summary": "Operation Blue Skies is the world’s first trial to deploy contrail avoidance measures across an entire airspace, aiming to lower the climate impact of flights on a large scale",
  "key_points": [
    "Starting later this year, planes over North Atlantic to be rerouted to avoid contrails.",
    "Shanwick airspace, a busy North Atlantic corridor, chosen for the contrail mitigation experiment.",
    "AI-generated weather forecasts from Google to determine optimal altitudes for contrail reduction."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}