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I grew up in Flyover Country I could lay there in the lawn on a hot summer's day and see HUNDREDS of contrails ~ many as high as 35,000 feet. So how wide do you think they might have been?

I grew up in the Denver area and watched a few hundred myself. I would say less than half a mile before they simply got so thin they no longer looked like a contrail at all.

I would say less than half a mile before they simply got so thin they no longer looked like a contrail at all.

Must be a local Denver phenomenon. A quarter of the sky or more is not unusual around here and elswhere:

You were already up to 5,000 feet. I was at 528 feet. Plus, it was essentially a big ol' swamp in Central Indiana so there was plenty of moisture to fuel all sorts of things including ice crystal growth around existing micro-crystals ~ we were right under the average latitude of the main jet stream across the country ~ plenty of super cold air up there at 35000 ft.

I suspect Colorado conditions are really different when it comes to micro-climates and that effect is reflected in contrails.

Oh, one other thing, the plane we've picked has THREE VERY LARGE ENGINES, carries lots of freight and express of a high value nature, and undoubtedly burns a whale of a lot of fuel. Be interesting to find out what the contrails are like as a passenger plane, or a freighter.

Still, the more atmosphere you have between you and a particular part of the contrail, you're going to have magnification. The contrail could be a quarter mile wide and you'd see it Way over to the West there as being 20 miles wide.

You see the same effect every day as the Sun pops up ~ it looks much larger at the horizon than it does later on risen in the sky.