10 excuses airlines use to justify why they don’t take action on contrail warming

Contrail - those thin white lines planes sometimes leave behind in the sky – act as heat traps and contribute roughly as much climate warming as all the jet fuel burned.

Yet, most airlines still do nothing to avoid them.

Why not? Well, industry insiders have many explanations for not doing anything about their contrails. Some are valid concerns. Others… less so.

So we sat down with aviation sustainability expert, Dr. Paul Hodgson, to unpack 10 excuses airlines use to justify why they don’t take action on contrails:

1.     “The science is uncertain"
2.     "Contrail prediction models are inaccurate"
3.     “Verification is impossible”
4.     “Adding more fuel and CO₂ is unacceptable”
5.     “Operational implementation is too complex”
6.     “Air traffic control cannot support contrail avoidance”
7.     “There's no regulation or contrail pricing forcing us to take action”
8.     “There are no incentives for voluntary action”
9.     “There is no pressure from customers or the general population”
10.  “Acknowledging contrails would admit a bigger climate problem”

We’ve turned Paul's response to each excuse into a short 2-3 minute video episode which we dropped on LinkedIn over the summer of 2025.

3.     “Verification is impossible”