The contrails produced by the aviation activities of jet aircraft in the upper troposphere can affect the regional climate and have a positive contribution to global warming. The radiative forcing of contrails is closely related to the regional coverage, physical properties and optical properties of contrails. This paper reviews the related research progress in line-shaped contrails in recent decades and summarizes different methods for line-shaped contrails detection. Firstly, this paper discusses the mainstream Contrail Detection Algorithm (CDA) and its various extension algorithms in Europe and America, and summarizes the seasonal and diurnal variation characteristics of line-shaped contrails coverage over Western Europe, North America and other regions. Then this paper discusses several calculation schemes for the optical depth of line-shaped contrails and their calculation uncertainties. Finally, this paper analyses the radiative forcing of line-shaped contrails and its relationship with the coverage and optical thickness, and points out the problems existing in present studies of contrails and their future development direction.