Princejets.com has access to up to date listings of empty leg flights available throughout the world. While empty leg flights can offer a great value, they are often more difficult to co-ordinate than a standard private jet charter due to the time constraints involved.
What are empty leg charters?
Empty leg flights occur when a jet flies one way or drops off its occupants and needs to return to its home base or fly to another location to pick up the next scheduled flight. In this case its flying with just the pilots and perhaps a few other crew members but without any other passengers. While it would seem that it would make business sense to charter or rent those seats to paying passengers there are other considerations that make empty leg flights often overly marketing and many supposed empty leg flight offers have proven to be nothing but empty air.
The reason for this is that most people assume a private jet owner would want to get every charter flight that he can, but that is not the case. Chartering an aircraft has many special rules and it can be difficult to find passengers on a moment’s notice. They also may not want to have the added work of cleaning the jet etc. after the flight and before the next one. Because of all of this empty legs are not the amazing deal that you might think, most of the time. Typically they go for about 20 to 30 percent less than a normal charter flight would cost. But getting that private jet for the cost of a first class ticket is usually just marketing hype. Not that it never happens, it’s just quite rare.
