In partnership with 4Air, Victor has revealed the results of its inaugural 2025 Contrails Report, verifying the impact of contrails on global warming, as both organisations continue to raise awareness of the CO2 and non-CO2 impact of business aviation on climate change and urge all commercial airlines to immediately publish their own transparent contrail analysis reports.

Contrails are long thin lines of cloud, usually seen behind an aircraft and are a product of aircraft engine emissions interacting with the right combination of temperature and humidity in the upper atmosphere.

Depending on the location and time of day, long-lasting or ‘big-hit’ contrails can have an outsized warming impact, trapping and absorbing heat that otherwise would radiate back into space. Research conducted by the European Commission indicates that contrails and non-CO2 emissions are currently responsible for about twice as much warming as the CO2 emitted by aviation. Recent estimates from the University of Cambridge Aviation Impact Accelerator show that contrails cause about the same amount of warming each year as all the CO2 emitted by all flights from 1945 to 2018.

Toby Edwards, co-CEO at Victor states: “One misconception is that private jets fly above contrail regions; our report proves this isn't always the case. We want our private jet clients to have the option to avoid contrail formation by choosing progressive operators that are proactively making small adjustments to their flight paths to avoid contrail-forming regions, thereby lowering their environmental impact. Operators that are working on contrail avoidance using smart flight management software, which is already readily available, would be transparently recommended to clients. Such an offering would be a natural extension to our existing product, which includes aircraft estimate fuel-burn data and Neste sustainable aviation fuel.”

Victor's transparent Contrails Report, the first of its kind from a private jet charter broker and set to be republished annually, analysed 2,987 flights across a mixed fleet worldwide. The findings revealed that just one per cent of contrails accounted for 48 per cent of total warming impact, highlighting how a small number of high-impact contrails are disproportionately responsible for climate effects, which demonstrates that meaningful change is achievable by targeting specific flight profiles.

A similar previous study by 4Air also showed the concentration of a majority of the contrail impact emerging from a small minority of flights, underscoring the opportunity to cut climate impact substantially by addressing just a fraction of flights.

Results from the comprehensive analysis by 4Air, which used the open-source Contrail Cirrus Prediction model from Contrails.org and hindcast weather data plus ADS-B data within a flight, shine the spotlight on the non-CO2 impact of Victor's charter flights and highlights the alarming impact of contrails by the growing commercial airline sector, reinforcing calls to accelerate the deployment of known mitigation techniques that could quickly reduce these effects.

Kennedy Ricci, president of 4Air points out this is an industry wide aviation issue, not isolated to business aviation: “Avoiding atmospheric regions likely to create big hit contrails represents a very large opportunity to reduce the impact from aviation. But effectively mitigating these regions will require proactive flight planning by operators as well as coordination with air traffic control. As we look at meeting aviation's climate goals, it is critical to raise awareness of both the impact and opportunity of non-CO2 impacts and encourage operators to understand their contrail footprint.”