American Pauses Climate Trial as Fuel Prices Spike, Hopes to Resume in Fall

American Airlines paused its contrail-avoidance trial due to spring fuel price spikes, avoiding conflicting instructions to pilots and dispatchers. The trial aims to reduce aviation's climate impact by rerouting flights to avoid contrail-forming conditions. American's 2025 trial covering 2,400 flights found no statistically significant extra fuel burn, but modeling of 85,000 flights suggests fleet-wide implementation could increase fuel use by only 0.08%-0.11% while reducing warming by 73%. American hopes to resume in the fall pending fuel price normalization, targeting a larger sample in 2026. Meanwhile, the EU proposes ETS incentives for contrail avoidance, and a mandatory UK-funded opera…