In what might be the most promising climate solution to come out of the aviation industry in years, American Airlines and Google announced Thursday that they’ve successfully used artificial intelligence to help planes reduce their climate impact by avoiding contrails, those wispy white clouds behind airplanes that are actually trapping way more heat than most of us realize.

Here’s the deal: when planes fly through cold, humid air, ice crystals form around soot particles from engines, creating condensation trails that act like a blanket for Earth’s atmosphere. According to Contrails.org, a nonprofit research organization, these things are responsible for 1% to 2% of global warming. That might sound small, but it’s actually huge.

Google developed an AI forecasting tool that predicts where contrails are likely to form, and American Airlines integrated it into their flight planning system on a trial basis. Pilots could then safely adjust altitude or take alternative routes to dodge these contrail zones. The results? Absolutely wild. Out of 2,400 flights tested between the U.S. and Europe from January to May, the 112 flights that opted for contrail-avoiding routes created 62% fewer contrails compared to the control group. Researchers estimated that reduced warming impact by roughly 69%.

What really matters here is that the trial found no statistically significant difference in fuel usage between the two groups. That’s huge because extra fuel costs have been the biggest thing stopping airlines from even considering route changes. Dinesh Sanekommu, who leads Google’s contrail work, emphasized that aviation is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize, but AI-powered forecasts could help make a real difference.

Thomas Walker, a researcher at the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force who studies aviation climate impacts, called this “a pretty big step in the right direction”. He noted that the North Atlantic region is a major hotspot for contrails, which made this trial particularly effective. Meanwhile, Jill Blickstein, vice president of sustainability at American Airlines, confirmed that dispatchers and pilots found it straightforward to file and fly alternative plans.

The trial built on earlier work that Google, American Airlines, and Breakthrough Energy started in 2023. This time, instead of manually identifying flights, the contrail forecasts were integrated directly into the flight planning system, making it way more practical for real-world operations.

So what’s next? Google wants to conduct larger trials and work with all the other flight planning software providers to build contrail avoidance features into their systems. American Airlines says it’s not yet making contrail avoidance routine but hopes to continue studying different routes and times of day. If this takes off industry-wide, pun intended, it could legitimately be one of the most cost-effective climate solutions available right now. And honestly, the fact that it doesn’t require switching to expensive sustainable aviation fuel makes it even more promising.