What are those planes that we barely can see and leave really big trails of errmm clouds behind them?

Question

Hello! I'm talking about those straight trails of cloud/smoke that we often see throughout the day.
My mother told me that they are metereology planes but I can't find any pictures or information about them.
Could anyone give me more information about them? :)

A website with pictures would be great!! :) Thank you.

Mauro

Answer 1

I'm with Rob S ................... normal planes, flying high to save fuel as the air is thinner up there. The vapour trail is left because the air is below freezing at that altitude and the engines on the plane are hot, causing the vapour trail.

Answer 2

The white stuff is clouds. Only that and nothing more. There have been many tales and conspiracy theories about jet exhaust, chemical dumping and other crazy schemes,but none of them are true. What happens is that high up where the clouds form, just before that happens, the water vapour is right on the point of condensing to form a cloud. If an aeroplane moves through that air it causes enough disturbance for the cloud process to happen, but only along the flight path. The chemical dumping theory comes from a rare appearance of a short segment of vapour trail, this is simply where tha plane has flown through a piece of air that was closer to producing a cloud.

Answer 3

Normal aircraft flying at high altitude,they don't have to be jet aircraft,either,piston engines leave the leave the same smoke!trails,witch is actually a vapour trail(h2o) caused by the fuel burning .Some engines actually have water injected into the fuel mix to make them more efficient too.

Answer 4

Well, today those are jet planes, althought a propeller driven airplane will also leave what are called contrails. Contrails are condensation trails (sometimes vapour trails): artificial cirrus clouds made by the exhaust of aircraft engines or wingtip vortices which precipitate a stream of tiny ice crystals in moist, frigid upper air. Contrary to appearances, they are not air pollution as such, though might be considered visual pollution.

An aircraft engine's exhaust increases the amount of moisture in the air, which can push the water content of the air past saturation point. This causes condensation to occur, and the contrail to form.

Aviation fuel such as petrol/gasoline (piston engines) or paraffin/kerosene (jet engines) consists primarily of hydrocarbons. When the fuel is burned, the carbon combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide; the hydrogen also combines with oxygen to form water, which emerges as steam in the exhaust. For every gallon of fuel burned, approximately one gallon of water is produced, in addition to the water already present as humidity in the air used to burn the fuel. At high altitudes this steam emerges into a cold environment, (as altitude increases, the atmospheric temperature drops) which lowers the temperature of the steam until it condenses into tiny water droplets and/or desublimates into ice. These millions of tiny water droplets and/or ice crystals form the contrails. The temperature drop (and therefore, time and distance) the steam needs to condense accounts for the contrail forming some way behind the aircraft's engines. The majority of the cloud content comes from water trapped in the surrounding air. At high altitudes, supercooled water vapour requires a trigger to encourage desublimation. The exhaust particles in the aircraft's exhaust act as this trigger, causing the trapped vapor to rapidly turn to ice crystals. Contrails will only occur when the outside air temperature around the aircraft is at or below -57 degrees Celsius.

Answer 5

Those white trails you see are vapour trails formed behind the engines of the aircraft that are flying at very high altitudes.
High flight levels are not reserved to just aircraft that are flown for meterorlogical purposes. The most common ones you see, are normal Commercial passenger & cargo flights. Military flights are at levels even higher than that, but it would be only on rare occasions that you would see one of those.

For a website that would be of interest to you, try this one. www.eaa.org

Answer 6

It is as the previous answers have stated the water vapour from the high flying jumbos but if you fancy a bit of paranoia and conspiracy do some searches for 'chem-trails' for a few theories that these trail are ways of the government secretly testing chemicals on the unsuspecting public.

The truth is out there... ...i think.

Answer 7

I don't think they are any kind of special planes. They are just typical high flying commercial airliners. They are flying higher because of the efficiency of the engines in cruise. This translates to better fuel burn and lower cost for the fuel. This further translates to more profits for the carrier.
But what you see is the vapor from the unburned fuel in the jet's exhaust. It forms when you fly at high cold altitudes.

Answer 8

They are made by normal jet planes. They fly at such high altitude because the air is thinner and creates less drag when they fly, saving Fuel,The engines are designed to work most efficiently at this height. They also avoid a lot of the turbulence that is lower down.

Answer 9

They are normal jet aircraft, ie. airliners, etc... These aircraft fly around 36,000 feet, so that is why they look so small to you. The clouds that you see are known as contrails. This happens with the hot jet exhaust mixes with the cold air at high altitudes.
Here is a link to a pretty cool picture showing the contrails!
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1000914/M/

Answer 10

What you see are normal planes.. just they are flying high...going far places...
Since they are flying so high when the burn out fuel the give out water vapours which form something like a trail of cloud...