Climate change may make a long flight even longer, while costing airlines an additional $22 million per year in fuel, a cost likely to be passed along to passengers.

A study published last month in the journal Environmental Research Letters says that climate change may mean stronger jet stream winds, making it more difficult for planes to fly westward. That headwind becomes a tailwind when flying east, though, so flights from the United States to Europe could be about 15 percent shorter.

The jet stream is affected by temperature differences occurring at high altitudes between the tropics and polar regions. Changes in these temperatures could lead to changes in jet stream flow.

That being said, the wind speed change will only add an average of a minute and 18 seconds to each round-trip, so it’s not bad for individual flights. However, when you add up the changes over many flights, fuel prices go up, as does the environmental impact of consuming so much extra jet fuel.

“There is a robust increase in the round-trip journey time, which means planes spending longer in the air,” study author Dr. Paul Williams, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading, told the BBC. “When you add that up for all transatlantic aircraft you get an extra 2,000 hours of planes in the air every year, with $22 million extra in fuel costs and 70 million kg of CO2.

“The aviation industry is facing pressure to reduce its environmental impacts, but this study shows a new way in which aviation is itself susceptible to the effects of climate change. This effect will increase the fuel costs to airlines, potentially raising ticket prices, and it will worsen the environmental impacts of aviation.”