Minimizing contrail formation by rerouting around dynamic ice-supersaturated regions

, the European airspace is already faced with airspace capacity constraints, especially during business driven peak periods of the day in central European air traffic control sectors. This capacity bottleneck will cause a challenging number of severe difficulties in future flight planning and airport ground handling. Additionally, the growing public awareness and the increasing scientific knowledge of the aviation environmental impact urges air traffic stakeholders to reduce the aviation induced global warming to an acceptable level. These efforts should include both the prevention of unnecessary fuel burn due to detours and the avoidance of passing ice-supersaturated regions during cruise to prevent contrail formation. Therewith, conflicting goals have to be considered in trajectory optimization. The induced contrails influence the radiation budget of the Earth atmosphere, which depend on the dynamic size and location of the ice-supersaturated regions. However, contrail avoidance can lead to unsolvable high requirements on airspace capacity in dry and warm air spaces, where contrails are not induced.