How Much Does an Empty Leg Flight Cost?

Why there is no single answer

An empty leg is a by-product. The operator already has an aircraft, a crew and a fuel bill committed to moving that aeroplane from A to B. What they charge you is whatever recovers a useful share of a cost they cannot avoid, judged against how likely anyone else is to buy it.

That is why two superficially identical sectors — same route, same week, similar aircraft — can be priced very differently. One departs in three days with no other interest; the other departs in three weeks with two enquiries already.

What actually moves the price

• —Time to departure: pricing generally softens as an unsold sector approaches its date.
• —Aircraft category and age: a heavy jet repositioning costs more to move than a light jet, whatever the discount.
• —Route and airport fees: landing, handling, parking and slot charges vary enormously between fields.
• —Country taxes and duties, including passenger duties on certain jurisdictions and routes.
• —Crew duty and overnight requirements if the timing pushes the crew beyond a single duty period.
• —Whether the operator can sell the return sector as well, which changes their whole economics.
• —Demand on the sector — popular city pairs at peak times discount least.

Positioning logic in plain terms

Charter pricing normally bills you for the empty sectors flown to bring the aircraft to you. On an empty leg you are buying one of those sectors from somebody else's trip, which is precisely where the saving comes from — you are not paying for positioning, you are the positioning.

The corollary is that you must accept the operator's routing and broad timing. If you need the aircraft to come to you, that is on-demand charter and it is priced accordingly.

Empty leg versus on-demand charter

On-demand charter buys certainty: your airports, your departure time, your aircraft specification, with the positioning cost built into the quote. An empty leg buys a lower number in exchange for accepting fixed routing, a movable departure and genuine cancellation risk.

For flexible one-way trips the trade is often excellent. For time-critical travel with a hard arrival deadline, the certainty of ad-hoc charter is usually worth the difference.

Reading a published empty-leg price

Ask what the figure includes. A sector shown at a headline number may or may not carry landing and handling at both ends, catering, de-icing in winter, or applicable taxes. Our firm quotations state the all-in figure so there is nothing to discover later.

Many sectors are listed as price on request. That is not evasion — some operators do not publish empty-leg pricing publicly, and the number is confirmed with the quotation.

Where published savings figures come from

You will see headline savings quoted across the industry, sometimes as high as around 75% against the equivalent ad-hoc charter. Treat any such figure as the top of a range achieved on particular sectors, not as a rate you can rely on. The only price that matters is the one in your quotation.

All figures are indicative market ranges for planning purposes only. Actual pricing depends on aircraft availability, positioning, crew duty, airport fees and fuel on the day of travel.