Overview
- Consortium partners publicly announced the programme on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, backing a £5 million, 30‑month trial to test contrail avoidance at the scale of the Shanwick North Atlantic corridor.
- The programme is co‑funded by the UK government with £2.65 million from the Department for Transport and by in‑kind AI, engineering and computing support from Google UK valued at about £1.4 million.
- Two winter operational windows—about 20–40 test days each winter in 2026–27 and 2027–28—will target months when contrails are most climate‑damaging and will monitor roughly 10,000 flights during trial hours.
- Air traffic controllers at NATS will coordinate minor altitude changes (typically up to a few thousand feet) for a small share of flights (estimated 1%–5%) using AI forecasts from Google and meteorological data from the Met Office; partners will independently verify climate and operational effects.
- Researchers say contrails account for roughly one‑third of aviation’s warming and that Shanwick models indicate about 5% of global contrail warming comes from that corridor, so success could offer a low‑cost way to cut warming and inform wider airspace policy, though critics warn of taxpayer waste and possible cost or fuel impacts for airlines.