The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that an American Airlines jet roared out of the Belize airport and climbed through the tropical skies on its way to Dallas. The Globe's Eric Atkins writes that the Boeing 737 levelled out at 32,000 feet -- below the typical altitude -- before ascending to a higher-than-usual 38,000 feet. It was an unusual route, but this was not a typical flight. The deviations allowed the aircraft to avoid leaving cloud-like vapour streams known as contrails, a small step in reducing the major impact aviation has on climate change. The flight was one of 70 flown by the airline earlier this year on which the pilots were armed with contrail forecasts. That data, compiled by researchers at Google, pinpointed the location of the moist, cool atmospheric conditions in which ice and water vapour cling to an aircraft's sooty emissions and form the clouds that can trail an aircraft. Contrails are major contributors to climate change, forming long-lasting clouds that spread and trap the Earth's heat. Air Canada said in a statement that the Montreal airline is watching the various studies on contrail reduction "with an eye to incorporating the findings in future flight planning."