Empty legs: how to fly a business jet for several times less

Clients ask this all the time: empty legs — what actually are they, and why is the price four times below a normal charter, where is the catch? There is no catch, there are hard conditions. An empty leg is a repositioning (ferry) flight: the aircraft is flying from A to B without passengers anyway, and the operator is better off selling that flight for whatever money he can get than carrying air. You are getting on a flight that has already been scheduled without you.

Below is a look at real data: we took a snapshot of the listings feed on 7 August 2026 — 344 flights across 312 routes, 154 departure cities. All the price figures come from there; the charter rates come from our own database by aircraft class.

Where empty legs come from

An aircraft does not live at the destination. It has a base, a crew with duty time limits, a next booking and maintenance slots. That gives three typical scenarios.

Return to base. A client is flown from Nice to Geneva and dropped off. The aircraft goes back empty — unless someone else buys that leg.

Positioning to collect a client. The booking departs from Milan, but the aircraft is sitting in Munich. The Munich–Milan flight is paid for by the client as positioning, and the operator is glad to sell those same seats separately.

Repositioning to fit the schedule. The aircraft is ferried to where there is demand for it: to the Mediterranean for the start of the season, to a match, to a forum. Or to a particular hangar for maintenance.

In all three cases the costs have already been incurred: fuel, crew, airport charges. Selling the empty leg covers part of them — which is why the price falls.

From the inside the arithmetic is simple: a business jet puts in 300–400 hours a year against roughly 3 000 for a scheduled aircraft, while upkeep costs, as far as I know it, 10–20% of its value per year. On those numbers an operator fights for every paid hour, and that is exactly why an empty leg goes cheap.

What it costs: figures from the feed

Across the snapshot of 344 listings prices ran from €1 950 to €93 978. The median was €7 486, the average €9 156. The distribution looks like this:

Important: this is the price for the whole aircraft, every seat included. Specific examples from the same feed:

What to compare against

To see the saving you need the normal charter rate. These are the working ranges we use by class:

Now work out Rome → Heraklion. That is about 1 300 km, some two hours of flying on a midsize aircraft. On a normal booking you pay for four hours and more: the aircraft has to come back, and the empty return leg goes onto the invoice. Four hours at $4 500–7 500 is $18 000–30 000 plus charges. The empty leg on the same route — €5 200. A difference of three to five times.

Paris → Prague, about 880 km: an hour and a half in the air, but a normal charter invoice will show 3–3.5 hours, that is $13 500–26 000 on a midsize aircraft. In the feed — €7 030. A saving of two to three times.

Calgary → Edmonton, 245 km: forty minutes of flying, but the operator has a minimum charge per departure, and a normal booking on a light jet effectively never prices out below two flight hours — that is $7 000–10 000 plus charges. The empty leg — €1 950.

A realistic saving runs to two to four times, occasionally more. Promises of "90% off charter" turn up in advertising, but in a live feed such offers are isolated cases. One caveat: the feed prices are European in origin and quoted in euros while our rates are in dollars, so the comparison is approximate — but it conveys the order of magnitude correctly.

The main limitations

This is where the real cost of it starts. The operator and the primary client set the terms.

The route is fixed. In our snapshot 344 listings produced 312 unique city pairs — in other words, almost no repeats. The chance that your particular route turns up in the feed exactly when you need it is small. Waiting for a specific route can take weeks.

The timing is fixed. The date and the approximate departure window have already been set by the primary client. Moving it by a day is not possible; sometimes two or three hours can be agreed, and even that not always.

The booking window is short. Of the 344 listings, 298 (87%) departed within the next seven days, and 169 of those within the next three days, 132 within the next two. Empty legs appear once the primary flight is confirmed, and that is rarely far in advance.

The flight can be cancelled. This is the key one. The primary client moves the departure, drops it, or adds a return leg for himself — and the empty leg no longer exists. The money is returned, but the trip does not happen. An empty leg is an option, with no guarantee of departure.

There may be no capacity for the group. 239 of the 344 listings were aircraft with 7–9 seats. For 10–14 seats there were only 36 options, for 15 and above — 22. If there are twelve of you, the choice narrows several times over.

Who it suits and who it does not

It suits you if you are flexible on dates, flying one way, two to eight people, with a route between major hubs, and you have a plan B: a scheduled flight you will buy if the empty leg is cancelled.

It does not suit you if you have a hard meeting at a fixed time, need an out-and-back with an overnight, are moving a delegation of 12 or more, are going to an unusual airfield, or as a matter of principle cannot live with a cancellation a day out. In those cases it is more honest to book a normal charter and not put yourself through it.

How to catch empty legs

Three things that genuinely work.

Widen the geography. Look at the whole region. In the same snapshot the US Northeast shows up as departures from Boston, Westhampton and Atlantic City, and the French coast as Nice and Cannes: a neighbouring airport in the same region often turns up an option where the feed is empty for your own city. How much cheaper it works out is down to the particular leg.

Keep a ±2 day window. A hard date kills half the options. Two days of flexibility either way is the cheapest way to widen the choice.

Decide quickly. A good listing lives for hours. If it takes a day to clear the decision with three other people, empty legs are not your format.

The listings feed on our site updates continuously; if the route you want is not in it, leave a request with the route and dates.

Frequently asked questions

What should I ask the operator before paying? Who is operating the flight and on what type, up to what moment the primary client can still cancel the departure, whether the quoted price includes airport charges, which terminal you leave from and when you need to be there. Ask separately how long a refund takes if the flight falls through — worth settling before the transfer goes out.

The empty leg was cancelled the day before — what now? First cover the trip with your fallback: a scheduled flight on the same dates is usually still on sale, though a day out it costs noticeably more. In parallel ask the operator whether another empty leg fits your window, and have them price a normal charter on the route: once a trip is tied to a fixed date, that money is usually justified. Keep plan B ready from the start — the day of departure is too late to go looking for it.

How is an empty leg different from jet sharing? With an empty leg you buy the leg outright and pay for the whole aircraft, however many of you are on board. In jet sharing several passengers split the rental of one aircraft and each pays for their own seat only. For a party of two or three an empty leg often works out better; someone travelling alone is usually closer to sharing — assuming a suitable flight exists at all.

Can I bring a pet or oversized baggage? The operator and the crew of that particular aircraft decide: you are joining a flight that is already planned. Ask before you pay and give weights and dimensions honestly — the baggage hold on a light jet is small, and one extra case sometimes simply will not go in. For pets, check straight away whether a carrier is required and which veterinary papers the arrival country wants: those take time to arrange, and the booking window on empty legs is short.

Alexander Filimonov — business aviation: sourcing, acquisition and entry into service of aircraft.