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There's a well-kept secret in private aviation that most people outside the industry have never heard of — and it's one that can make flying private genuinely accessible at a fraction of the standard cost. It's called an empty leg, and if you travel with any flexibility in your schedule, it's one of the most valuable tools available to you.
An empty leg — also known as a deadhead flight or ferry flight — occurs when a private jet needs to travel between locations without passengers on board. This happens in two common scenarios: an aircraft drops off its charter client at a destination and needs to reposition to its home base, or an aircraft needs to travel to a city to pick up its next booking. In both cases, the jet is flying regardless of whether anyone is on it. Rather than absorb that operating cost entirely, operators make these flights available at significantly reduced rates — typically 50 to 75 percent below the standard charter price for the same route.
To understand why the discount is so substantial, it helps to understand how private charter pricing works. When you book a standard one-way charter, you're often paying for the repositioning cost built into the operator's quote — even if it isn't explicitly itemised. With an empty leg, that repositioning cost is already absorbed by the preceding or following booking. The operator's goal is simply to offset fuel and handling costs on a flight that's happening anyway. The result is a dramatically reduced price for the passenger — without any reduction in the aircraft, the crew, or the experience.
Empty legs come with conditions that are worth understanding before you book. First, they're route-specific — you can't change the origin or destination. The aircraft is going where it's going, and the route is fixed. Second, they're time-sensitive. Empty legs are tied to the operator's schedule and can be cancelled or modified if the primary charter changes. A client who amends their itinerary, moves their departure time, or cancels entirely can affect the empty leg upstream or downstream. Complete Concierge always confirms live availability before accepting any payment or finalising arrangements, and we keep clients informed in real time if anything changes. Third, and most practically — they move fast. The best routes on the most desirable aircraft get claimed within hours of becoming available.
Complete Concierge monitors its empty leg inventory every day. When a new route becomes available, our members receive direct notification before the flight is listed anywhere else — giving them a meaningful head start on the best options. Registered clients who aren't yet members also have access to the inventory, but after the member priority window. If you travel regularly and your schedule has even a degree of flexibility, membership pays for itself in empty leg access alone.
The clients who get the most value from empty legs are those who approach them intentionally rather than reactively. Here's how to think about it: if you know you need to get from Miami to New York in the next two weeks and you're flexible on the exact day, tell your Complete Concierge advisor. We'll flag the moment a matching route becomes available and give you the opportunity to claim it before anyone else. The same applies to return legs — if you're chartering a one-way flight to a destination, there's a good chance an empty leg exists in the opposite direction. We coordinate both sides of the journey and present the most cost-effective combination.
Empty legs are ideal for clients who have flexibility in their travel dates and aren't locked into a specific departure time. They work particularly well for leisure travel, weekend trips, and any journey where the destination matters more than the exact schedule. For time-critical business travel where the departure must happen at a specific moment, a standard charter remains the right choice — and Complete Concierge arranges both with the same level of care and precision.
The private experience, at a fraction of the cost. That's what an empty leg delivers — and it's why Complete Concierge clients who know about them use them every chance they get.