Empty Leg Guides · 13 min read
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By Pat Sinnott, Founder of Peak Aviation Solutions, also on LinkedIn. Commercial multi-engine rated pilot, 21 years in private aviation, helped grow Summit Aviation’s flight department from one airplane to 21 before starting Peak in Bozeman, Montana.
Last updated: July 7, 2026
Empty leg flights are the one corner of private aviation where the discounts are real, and also the corner with the most misleading marketing on the internet. “Up to 75% off” is technically true and practically rare. Listings go stale faster than the sites carrying them refresh. And the restrictions that decide whether a deal works for you almost never appear in the ad.
I broker these flights for a living, from a desk wired into hundreds of operators’ schedules, and this guide is the complete picture: what empty leg flights are, what they actually cost, where they come from, how to find and book one safely, and who should walk away. Everything here comes from our own bookings and our own feed, not from recycled marketing claims. By the end you’ll know the 5-Day Rule, the three answers that protect any booking, and the honest math behind the discounts.
An empty leg private jet is a repositioning flight: an airplane that must fly empty to its next trip or home base, sold at a discount because some revenue beats none. Real-world savings run 30 to 60 percent below retail charter, with rigid departure windows set by the paying trip that created each leg.
In this guide: what an empty leg is, what a deadhead is, the real discounts, where legs come from, the restrictions, how to find and book one, the nationwide city picture, who they’re for, and FAQ.
The short version of what an empty leg is
A private jet finishes a paying trip and is now in the wrong city. It has to fly, empty, to its next pickup or back to its home base. That flight happens whether anyone buys it or not, so operators sell it at a discount rather than eat the whole cost.
That’s the entire concept. You’re not asking anyone to fly you somewhere cheaply; you’re paying for a flight that was already going to happen. Pilots and brokers also call these deadhead flights, ferry legs, or repositioning flights.
The full definition, including the story of a client who flew Missoula to the Bay Area for $8,500 on a trip that retails at $18,000, lives in what is an empty leg flight.
What is a deadhead flight, and how is it different from an empty leg?
A deadhead flight is the repositioning flight itself: the airplane moving to its next pickup or back to its home base with no paying passenger on board.
The two words describe the same airplane at two different moments. The deadhead sits on the operator’s schedule whether or not anybody outside the company ever hears about it.
An empty leg is that same deadhead once the operator decides to sell it. Nothing about the airplane, the crew, or the route changes. What changes is that the flight now carries a price and shows up somewhere you can find it.
So every empty leg starts life as a deadhead. The reverse is not true, and the asymmetry is worth sitting with: most deadheads never become empty legs at all. Some are never listed. Some are listed and nobody buys them, and the airplane flies empty exactly as planned.
That relationship explains most of what feels strange about this market. The deadhead exists because of the paying trip that created it, which is why the departure window belongs to that trip and not to you. It is also why a listing is not yet a flight until somebody checks it against the operator’s schedule. The deadhead is the real thing. The listing is only a claim about it.
How much are empty leg flights?
Here’s what our own quote and booking history says, as opposed to what advertising says: a realistic range is 30 to 60 percent below retail charter, deepest on short notice.
The timing pattern behind that range is the single most useful thing to learn. A leg posted weeks out sits near retail, because the operator can still sell that flight as a full-price charter.
Inside about five days, prices start moving. Inside 72 hours, your position is strongest, because the alternative to your money is an empty cabin. We call it the 5-Day Rule.
There’s a floor under the discounts too, set by what it costs the operator just to fly the airplane at all; the arithmetic behind that floor is worked through in how empty leg flights work. The famous 75-percent-off leg is what it looks like when a desperate operator breaks that floor with hours to spare: real, occasional, never the plan.
Season shapes the supply as much as timing shapes the price. Around every major holiday, and through any resort market’s peak months, heavier paid flying produces heavier repositioning, which means more legs to choose from exactly when you’re most likely to travel.
Two numbers from our own files anchor the whole market:
| Light jet corridor | Retail all-in | Empty leg |
|---|---|---|
| Missoula to Bay Area | about $18,000 | $8,500, a real 2026 booking |
| Phenom 300, per hour | $3,900 to $4,200 retail | about $1,800 direct operating cost, the floor under any discount |
Both are real quotes or real bookings, taxes and fees included. The full corridor set, LA to Las Vegas and Bozeman to Scottsdale included, is in what is an empty leg flight, and the complete economics, including who owns the airplanes and why that matters, are in how empty leg flights work.
Where empty leg private jets come from
Most charter aircraft are owned by individuals who lease them to operators, so a repositioning flight that earns the owner nothing becomes found revenue the moment somebody buys it, which is why the discounts are genuine and why operators will never simply discount everything.
Legs come from three kinds of aircraft, and one airplane can create two of them in an ordinary week, which is worked through in how empty leg flights work, along with the “subject to owner approval” wrinkle that has cost us a booking only twice in recent years.
The restrictions on empty leg charter flights
Every empty leg restriction traces to one fact: the schedule belongs to the paying trip that created the leg, not to you.
The departure window is narrow. Usually one to three hours on a specific date, dictated by the operator’s surrounding commitments. If your day can’t bend to the window, the deal doesn’t exist for you.
Legs vanish. Good ones sell in hours, and how fast is covered in how to find empty leg flights. Others evaporate because the primary trip changed, through no fault of anyone’s.
The paperwork is where protection lives. Three answers, demanded before you pay anyone, filter out most of what goes wrong in this market: the exact departure window, what happens if the primary trip cancels, and whether the specific crew, not just the operator, passes the third-party safety check.
All three, plus the payment mechanics and red flags, are explained fully in how to book empty leg flights.
At Peak, an empty leg gets the identical safety file as a full-price charter: the Operator Vetting File, built once per operator and including a copy of the D085, the FAA operations specification listing the aircraft authorized under that operator’s Part 135 certificate, and the Total Flight Review we run within 24 hours of every flight. Both are described on our safety page. When a booked leg collapsed under one of our clients, we sourced a replacement the same day, held his price, and absorbed the difference. How a provider answers that scenario tells you everything you need to know about them.
How to find empty leg flights
Hundreds of empty leg flights get posted across the country every single day. The inventory is real. The problem is that it changes hourly and most public marketplaces show stale listings with the restrictions stripped out.
Marketplace listings lag operators’ actual schedules, often omit the departure window, and anything sold by the seat needs DOT authority ordinary charter does not, so treat every public listing as unconfirmed until someone checks it against the operator’s calendar.
The reliable approach is getting filtered inventory pushed to you: our alert system ties into operators’ scheduling systems directly, watches 250 nautical miles around both ends of any US city pair in both directions, and more than 500 subscribers already use it.
Subscribing is free on our empty legs page, with no membership and no dues. Standby empty-leg programs exist and some of them are good; they are priced as memberships, such as SkyShare’s OpenJet at $15,000 a year (skyshare.com, fetched August 2026). Ours is not one, and there is nothing to cancel. Where I look, what marketplaces get wrong, and how to tune your setup are all in how to find empty leg flights.
How booking an empty leg private jet works
The process is faster than most people expect: inquire, we confirm the leg and its real window with the operator, you get an all-in proposal (federal excise tax and segment fees included, no trailing surprises), you sign by DocuSign and pay, we cross-check every document, and your itinerary arrives with the FBO address and tail number.
Five details make the first conversation take five minutes rather than an afternoon, and they are listed in how to book empty leg flights. Same-day is routine, and the fastest one we have run was a Bozeman client to Seattle inside three hours of his first call, described in full there too.
The full walk-through, including payment mechanics, the cancellation table, and six red flags to watch for with any provider, is on the same page.
Empty leg flights nationwide, city by city
We’re based in Bozeman, and the address confuses people, so let me be direct: this is a nationwide operation. About 80 percent of our flying happens outside Montana, our clients run corridors like Bozeman to Charleston, Cleveland to Phoenix, Denver to Lancaster, and St. Augustine to New York, and the alert system watches every US market plus international opportunities. A snowbird commute between the Midwest and Arizona runs on the identical machinery as a hop up or down a coast: same feed, same verification, same within-the-hour proposals.
The volume data makes the point better than I can. This is a four-market, seven-day sample, not a national count: from our feed on a single July day, here’s how many legs sat on the seven-day view within 250 nautical miles of four markets.
| Area (250 nautical mile radius), seven-day sample | Legs posted, next 7 days |
|---|---|
| Teterboro / New York | 165 |
| Van Nuys / Los Angeles | 124 |
| Miami | 113 |
| Bozeman | 71 |
Four markets, one week, one day’s snapshot of the feed. Nationwide the posting runs into the hundreds every single day, so treat the table as a sample of where the depth is, not as the total.
If you’re near New York, Los Angeles, or Florida, this market is deepest exactly where you live.
The markets people call me about
Below is roughly how I’d answer if you rang the office and named your city. The counts belong only to the four markets we pulled that day. Everything else is coverage, not a count.
- Empty leg flights New York. 165 legs on the seven-day view within 250 nautical miles of Teterboro on that July day, the deepest market in our feed.
- Empty leg flights Miami. 113 on the same view, and Florida carries some of the heaviest private jet traffic in the country.
- Empty leg flights Fort Lauderdale and empty leg flights West Palm Beach. Same coast, same alert. Put either one on a corridor and the system watches it in both directions, 250 nautical miles of radius on each end.
- Empty leg flights Houston and empty leg flights Dallas. Texas is on the short list of markets where private jets fly most, and either city can go on watch against anywhere in the country.
- Empty leg flights Fort Worth, empty leg flights Austin, and empty leg flights San Antonio. Same state, same feed. Put any two of them on a corridor and the system watches it in both directions.
- Empty leg flights Chicago and empty leg flights from Atlanta. Nothing about the machinery changes in the middle of the country: same feed, same verification, same within-the-hour proposals.
- Empty leg flights Detroit. The upper Midwest feeds the snowbird corridors toward Arizona and Florida, and a Detroit pair goes on watch the same way as any coastal one.
- Empty leg flights Seattle. Seattle turns up regularly on our own Bozeman corridors, and it was the destination in the three-hour booking mentioned above.
Empty legs from Bozeman and the Mountain West
That said, home is home, and nobody covers it like we do. Bozeman’s strongest corridors run to Salt Lake City, the Bay Area, and Arizona, with Seattle and Denver appearing regularly. Peak season runs from just before Independence Day into late August, when Yellowstone, Glacier, and Big Sky traffic floods the feed with repositioning legs, and every major holiday produces its own surge. Seventy-one legs in a single July week is what full song sounds like here. If that’s your corner of the country, the live local picture lives in empty legs from Bozeman.
One review from our empty legs page says what we hope every client would:
“Pat’s communication is great and he has found us attractively priced flights.”
Empty legs vs standard charter vs jet cards
Where does this fit among your options? A quick honest comparison from someone who sells only one of the three:
| Empty leg | Standard charter | Jet card / fractional | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | 30 to 60% below retail | Retail, all-in when quoted properly | Fixed hourly rate, plus prepaid capital or dues. Some programs add a fuel variable and some do not; check the contract, not the brochure |
| Schedule control | The leg’s window rules | Fully yours | Yours, with lead-time rules and short-notice penalties |
| Commitment | None; pay per trip | None; pay per trip | Upfront deposit or share purchase |
| Best for | Flexible trips, found-money savings | Must-make dates | 50 to 100 hours a year for a card; 100 to 250 for a share |
The honest read: between about 50 and 100 hours a year a jet card deserves a look, past 100 hours a fractional share starts to make financial sense, and past 250 hours the honest answer is owning the airplane. I’ve told clients exactly that. Below that line, pay-as-you-go wins, with no initiation fees and no monthly dues, and empty legs are the discount layer on top. At Peak, the price you sign is the price; nothing gets added after the proposal.
Who empty leg flights are for
The honest fit test: can you decide fast and flex a little? The winning profile treats these as found money, keeps plus or minus a day of date flexibility, accepts 250 nautical miles of airport radius, and says yes within hours when the right leg appears.
The wrong fit is easier to name than the right one: a date that cannot move. If your trip has to happen on one specific day, this market cannot sell you that, and I would rather say so than sell you the risk. Book a standard charter for those trips and leave the alerts running underneath them. Most of our clients run both, and the two never compete for the same trip.
Even jet card members and fractional owners subscribe, using empty legs as supplemental lift alongside their programs. There’s no wrong profile here except the traveler who needs certainty and won’t accept that this market can’t sell it.
And a candid calibration you won’t find on marketing pages: empty leg flights are a small slice of even our bookings. The stars have to align. When they do, the payoff is outsized, and the people it happens to are the ones who were positioned, not the ones who were lucky.
The deeper habit behind all of it: winners quit hunting individual flights and put corridors on watch instead. Set the watch once, live your life, and let the right leg interrupt you. Deciding fast is the only skill this market actually requires, and it gets much easier when the verification is somebody else’s job. The whole system fits inside one free email subscription.
Common questions about empty leg flights
How much are empty leg flights?
Typically 30 to 60 percent below retail charter for the same aircraft and route, based on our booking history. A light jet trip retailing around $18,000 might go for $8,500 to $12,600 as an empty leg, with the deepest discounts inside the final five days before departure. Beware listings weeks out priced near retail; that’s normal, not a scam.
What is a dead leg flight?
Same airplane, different word. Dead leg, deadhead, ferry leg, and repositioning flight all describe a flight with no paying passenger on board. Empty leg is what the market calls that flight once the operator has listed it for sale, which is why you tend to hear the other words from pilots and see this one on listings. If your provider says dead leg and you say empty leg, you are both talking about the same airplane.
Are there empty leg flights near me?
Almost certainly. Legs post daily nationwide, concentrated where private jets fly most: New York, LA, Florida, Texas, and resort markets in season. A corridor alert covering 250 nautical miles at each end of a route will surface legs from airports most travelers never check, the way San Jose serves San Francisco travelers and Butte serves Bozeman.
How far in advance should I book an empty leg flight?
Watch continuously, act late. Legs surface as operator schedules firm up, prices drop inside five days, and same-day bookings are routine. If your dates are fixed months ahead, book a standard charter instead and keep alerts running for flexible trips.
Are empty leg private jets safe?
The aircraft and crew are the same ones flying full-price charters. What varies is the vetting of whoever sells it to you: ask for the crew-level third-party safety report, such as an ARGUS TripCHEQ or a Wyvern PASS report, not just the operator rating.
Can I book a round trip using an empty leg?
Empty legs are one-way by nature, but pairing one with a standard one-way charter in the other direction is often the smartest combination. Priced together, the discounted outbound and a standard one-way return usually land below round-trip retail, which is the comparison worth asking any provider to run.
The bottom line
Empty leg flights reward understanding over luck. The discount is real because the economics are: an airplane that has to move anyway, and an owner who gets paid nothing when it moves empty. The restrictions are real for the same reason, and the people who win are the ones who set up once, stay a little flexible, and decide fast.
Four deeper guides hang off this page whenever you want the details: the definition and real prices, the finding process, the booking process, and the economics underneath it all.
Put your corridor on watch
Everything above only pays off if you’re positioned when a leg appears. Two minutes on our empty legs page: pick any city pair in the country, both directions, 250 nautical miles of radius on each end. Alerts go out when legs post rather than on a set schedule. Free, no membership, pay only when you fly. The live inventory is on the same page, and the Peak Aviation app, free in the App Store, puts it in your pocket.
And if you’re reading this in summer or in the run-up to a major holiday, you’re reading it at the right time; that’s when the feed runs deepest.
Then the Thursday comes when your alert shows one of these empty leg flights on your exact corridor at 40 percent under retail, verified with the operator before you pay, proposal in your inbox within the hour. That’s not a lottery ticket. That’s a system working.
Rather talk it through first? Call or text (406) 296-3256 and you’ll get me, not a queue, or request a quote for any trip, empty leg or standard.
Subscribe to empty leg alerts, free
Related guides
- What Is an Empty Leg Flight? A Broker Explains
- How to Find Empty Leg Flights (Where Brokers Actually Look)
- How Do Empty Leg Flights Work? A Broker Explains the Economics
- How to Book an Empty Leg Flight
Related services
- Empty leg alerts and live inventory, free subscription, pay only when you fly
- Request a charter quote, all-in pricing on any trip
- Meet Pat Sinnott, the pilot who verifies every leg
Peak Aviation Solutions, Private Jet Charter Broker
Peak Aviation Solutions is a pilot-founded private jet charter broker headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, arranging charter flights across the US and Canada. We arrange — you fly.
Founder: Pat Sinnott, commercial multi-engine rated pilot with 21 years in private aviation. Helped grow Summit Aviation’s flight department from one airplane to 21 before founding Peak. NBAA member.
Services: private jet charter brokerage, empty leg flights and free empty leg alerts, business travel, personal travel, group travel, and event charter. No membership fees; clients pay per trip. Third-party safety vetting on every flight.
Coverage: roughly 5,000 public-use airports across the United States, only about 500 of which have commercial airline service (FAA), plus Canada. About 80 percent of Peak’s flying happens outside Montana.
Contact: charter@flypeak.com · (406) 296-3256 · flypeak.com · Instagram @peakaviationsolutions
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