Quick answer
Empty leg flights USA-wide are plentiful but spread across many hubs. On one October day, about 85% of the readable legs in our live feed (149 of 174) started in the US, and Texas led supply, with Houston airports listing 46 departures. The median empty leg was about US$4,837 for the whole aircraft; typical savings run 25–75% below full charter, and the live figure is confirmed on enquiry.
Key takeaways
- The US is the deepest empty-leg market in the world, but supply is spread across many hubs, not one city.
- On our one-day October snapshot, Texas airports accounted for just over half of US-origin legs.
- Legs run against the flow: north out of Florida in spring, out of Aspen after the holidays, home after big events.
- Prices below are indicative; the live figure depends on the specific leg and is confirmed on enquiry.
- Watch a region's airports as one pool, and set a standing alert rather than searching once.
Empty leg flights USA-wide work exactly as they do anywhere else: a jet drops a client one way, has to get home or on to its next job, and the operator sells that repositioning flight at a discount rather than fly it with nobody aboard (our explainer on what is an empty leg flight covers the basics). What is different about America is scale and spread. The US is the largest private-aviation market in the world, so it produces more empty leg flights than anywhere else, but they are scattered across dozens of busy airports rather than funnelled through one city the way UK legs funnel through London.
This guide is the US counterpart to our guide to empty leg flights UK, and it follows the same structure: where the legs actually appear, which corridors produce them, how supply moves through the year, what they cost, and when they aren't worth chasing. Where we quote numbers from our own live feed, we say so, and we treat them as a snapshot rather than market statistics.
Why the USA produces so many empty legs
Three things make the American market so deep. First, size: more business aircraft are based and chartered in the US than anywhere else, so more are repositioning at any moment. Second, distance: a country roughly five hours across by jet generates long one-way trips, each leaving an aircraft far from home. Third, habit: clients fly one way to a second home, a ski house, a game or a race, then fly back days or weeks later on a different aircraft.
Every one of those one-way trips creates a leg the operator would rather sell than fly empty. Across the industry, trade press estimates put roughly 40% of private jet flights as empty repositioning legs at any given time, and in a market the size of the US that is a very large, constantly refreshing pool.
The catch is the same as in the UK. Plenty of legs doesn't mean one on your route on your day. They cluster around particular airports and corridors, and the clusters move with the seasons and the event calendar.
What our live feed showed on one October day
To ground this guide in something more concrete than general claims, we looked at a single day's snapshot of our own live feed, which is sourced from the global empty-leg marketplace. One day in October, we counted every leg whose departure and arrival airports we could read cleanly. This is not a market survey, and a different day would give different numbers. It is simply a picture of what was actually listed.
The headline: about 85% of the readable live legs that day started in the US, 149 out of 174. That share alone tells you how dominant the American market is in global empty-leg supply. Within the US, the busiest airports and areas looked like this:
One-day snapshot from our live feed, October. Counts are legs we could read cleanly; "—" means we didn't record a figure for that direction. A snapshot, not a market statistic: supply changes daily.
The Texas story
The most striking thing in that snapshot is Texas. Houston, the Dallas area and Austin together accounted for 78 of the 149 US-origin legs, just over half. Houston airports alone listed 46 departures and 51 arrivals, more than every other area in the table combined. Texas is a large, wealthy state with long distances between its cities and heavy business travel tied to energy and finance, and on the day we looked, that showed up clearly in empty-leg supply.
Two cautions before reading too much into it. One day is one day; a snapshot taken during a ski weekend or the run-up to a big event elsewhere could look quite different. And the snapshot fell in October, the month the United States Grand Prix is held in Austin, so some of the Texas movement may be event-related. The practical takeaway is still useful: if you are anywhere in Texas and flexible, the state's airports are worth watching as a group.
The median price
The median leg price in that snapshot was about US$4,837 for the whole aircraft. Because you are buying the whole cabin, that figure divided by four or six passengers becomes a per-person number that can sit close to a premium airline fare, which is the core of the empty-leg case in any market.
The US airports that matter for empty legs
Our snapshot shows where supply was on one day. Over a year, a handful of business-aviation hubs come up again and again, either because they are the main private gateway for a wealthy city or because they sit at the end of a popular seasonal route.
- Teterboro (KTEB), New Jersey. The gateway for private jet hire New York, about 12 miles from Midtown, with Westchester and Morristown as alternatives. New York is the deepest market in the country, and its aircraft fly out to Florida, Aspen and the Hamptons and then need to come home.
- Opa-Locka (KOPF), Florida. South Florida's main business-aviation hub, and the base for most private jet hire Miami trips, with Miami International's executive terminal and Fort Lauderdale Executive as alternatives. Winter fills it; spring empties it northbound.
- Van Nuys (KVNY), California. The Los Angeles basin's workhorse business field and one of the busiest in the world, feeding Las Vegas, Aspen and every transcontinental route east.
- Houston and the Dallas area. On our snapshot day, the deepest two-way supply of all. In the Dallas area, Love Field and Addison carry much of the private traffic.
- Aspen (KASE), in the Rockies. A small, high-altitude airport that becomes one of the most important in the country in ski season. Legs flow in before the big weekends and out after them. Our guide to private jet hire Aspen covers the airport's quirks.
- Las Vegas, Scottsdale and Chicago. Steady secondary markets; Henderson Executive is the dedicated business field for Las Vegas.
As with the London airports, treat a city's airports as one pool: Love Field and Addison both serve Dallas, and Teterboro, Westchester and Morristown all serve New York.
The US corridors that produce the most legs
Certain routes are repositioned so often that they behave almost like a shuttle, even though no leg is ever guaranteed on a particular date:
- New York – Miami. The deepest domestic corridor on the East Coast. Southbound in late autumn and winter, northbound in spring as the season ends. Aircraft that flew clients south have to come back.
- Los Angeles – Las Vegas. One of the densest short business-jet hops in the world, and very busy around the Las Vegas Grand Prix in November.
- Within Texas. Houston, Dallas and Austin trade aircraft constantly. In our snapshot this was the single richest seam of supply.
- The ski routes into Aspen. New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago all feed Aspen in winter, and the empty legs run the opposite way to the guests: in before the holiday weekends, out after them.
- Transcontinental (New York – Los Angeles). Fewer legs than the short corridors, but large aircraft and large absolute savings when they appear, especially after a major event such as the Super Bowl.
Legs outside these corridors appear all the time, because an empty leg is simply a byproduct of wherever someone booked a one-way trip. These are the routes worth building a standing alert around rather than searching cold. Our guide to how to find empty legs covers how to set that up.
Set a route alert on a US corridor and we'll watch it for you, with no daily searching.
Set up a route alert →How US empty-leg supply shifts through the year
The US calendar has two kinds of rhythm: the seasons, and the big events. Both move aircraft in one direction and then leave them needing to come back, and that return movement is where the legs are.
The seasonal migrations
Winter pulls aircraft south and into the mountains: Florida fills from the Northeast and Midwest, and Aspen fills around the holidays. Spring reverses both flows. Summer shifts the weight to the Northeast coast, with short hops out of New York to the beaches. Business corridors, such as those within Texas, stay busy all year because they run on work, not weather.
The event weeks
Big events concentrate hundreds of aircraft into one city for a few days, then send them all home at once. The arrival days are expensive and tight on slots; the departure days are when empty legs appear, as jets that dropped passengers reposition out. The pattern repeats across the calendar:
- Private jet to the Super Bowl (February). The single biggest private-jet day in the world. Basin parking fills, so many jets drop passengers and reposition out, then come back for the pickup.
- United States Grand Prix, Austin (October). Traffic from New York, LA, Miami, Dallas and Las Vegas; the value sits on the post-race legs back to the coasts.
- Private jet to the Las Vegas Grand Prix (November). Record aircraft movements into the valley; Sunday-night and Monday legs head back to California.
- Private jet to Art Basel Miami Beach (December). Collectors fly in all week; legs head back to the Northeast and West Coast after the fair.
The practical rule: if you can travel on the day after an event finishes, in the direction everyone else is going home, you are where the supply is.
Empty leg flights USA: what they cost
US operators quote in dollars, but charter rates are set by aircraft class. These are the indicative sterling benchmarks we use across the site, the number any empty-leg discount is measured against:
Indicative only. Empty legs typically run 25–75% below the equivalent full charter; the live price on any leg depends on the operator, the routing and how close to departure it's booked, and the live figure is confirmed on enquiry.
Pinned to real corridors, the indicative one-way ranges on our destination and event pages look like this:
Indicative one-way prices for the whole aircraft. Event-week pricing sits higher than ordinary weeks. The live figure is confirmed on enquiry.
The pattern matches the UK: the proportional saving is broadly similar across classes, but the absolute saving grows with distance and aircraft size, which is why a transcontinental heavy-jet leg can save tens of thousands of dollars. The snapshot median covers every leg that day, short and long, so treat it as a reference point, not a quote.
How does the US compare to the UK?
The two markets look different, and the difference changes how you should hunt. The UK's defining feature is concentration: a few London airports and a few southbound corridors carry a large share of UK legs, so a well-chosen alert on London to Nice or Geneva sits in front of most of the supply.
The US is the opposite. It has far more legs in absolute terms (our snapshot had 149 of 174 readable legs starting there), but they are spread across many hubs: Teterboro, Van Nuys, Opa-Locka, Houston, Dallas, Aspen, Las Vegas and more. No single corridor dominates. That makes the US market better for travellers who are flexible on where they start, and harder for anyone fixed on one obscure city pair.
How to actually catch a US empty leg
The method is the same as in the UK, adjusted for a bigger, more spread-out market.
- Set a standing route alert, not a one-off search. Legs surface and vanish within days, sometimes hours. A continuous watch catches them the moment they list.
- Watch a region, not one airport. Treat New York as Teterboro, Westchester and Morristown; Dallas as Love Field and Addison; Houston as all its business fields. Each extra airport you accept adds legs that can match.
- Fly with the flow. Head north out of Florida in spring, out of Aspen after the holidays, out of an event city the day after it ends. Legs run against the direction the paying clients travelled.
- Be ready to move. On the busiest corridors a good leg can go within hours. Have passenger details and payment ready so a notification becomes a booking.
A worked example: Miami to New York for six
Take the deepest East Coast corridor, Miami to New York, in spring, when aircraft that spent the winter in Florida are heading north. A group of six is flexible by a couple of days and happy with any New York-area airport.
Indicative ranges from our New York destination guide. The live figure is confirmed on enquiry.
At the lower end, that is around US$1,000 a head for a private jet door to door, through a private terminal, on a schedule that suits the group rather than an airline. The trade-off is the one that applies everywhere: the leg flies on the operator's date and from the operator's airport. A group that can move by a day or two catches value a group with fixed plans never sees.
Have a US route in mind? Check a live price, and see what's repositioning on your dates.
Check a price →When it's not worth chasing a US empty leg
Empty legs reward flexibility, and the honest trade-off is that the date, time and airports are set by the operator. If your trip has a hard edge, such as a board meeting, a wedding or a kick-off time, an empty leg introduces real risk. The leg can be sold to a full-fare client, rescheduled or cancelled, because it only exists while the original booking holds. That risk is fine for a flexible trip and unacceptable for a fixed one.
Two US-specific cautions. Arrival days into a Super Bowl or Grand Prix city are the worst time to rely on a leg, because supply is thin and slots are controlled; charter the arrival and use legs for the trip home. And distance cuts both ways: a leg from Houston is no use to someone in Boston.
A dedicated charter costs more but gives you the date, airport and aircraft you asked for. For the full trade-off, see are empty legs worth it.
What a US empty leg does and doesn't include
On a whole-aircraft empty leg, the quoted figure typically covers the aircraft, crew, fuel and standard handling. What can sit on top is broadly the same as in the UK: premium handling at busy fields, de-icing on winter departures (a real consideration in Aspen, Denver and the Northeast), catering beyond the standard offering, and ground transport.
Taxes are the one US line worth asking about directly. US commercial air transportation carries a 7.5% federal excise tax, and a good broker will tell you whether the figure you are shown includes it. Ask for the all-in number before you commit.
What doesn't change is the flight itself. A US charter flight, whether sold at full price or as an empty leg, operates under the same FAA Part 135 rules for on-demand operators, with the same aircraft, crew and maintenance standard. The discount is on the price, not on what you get.
Frequently asked questions
Are empty leg flights common in the USA?
Yes. The US is the largest private-aviation market in the world, and on the day we took a snapshot of our live feed, 149 of the 174 readable legs started there. They are spread across many airports, though, so any single route on any single date is never guaranteed.
Which US airports have the most empty legs?
On our one-day October snapshot, Houston airports led with 46 legs out and 51 in, followed by the Dallas area with 23 out and 27 in. Over a year, Teterboro, Opa-Locka, Van Nuys and Aspen in ski season are also major sources.
How much does an empty leg cost in the US?
The median leg in our snapshot was about US$4,837 for the whole aircraft. Short hops can be a few thousand dollars, while transcontinental heavy-jet legs run into tens of thousands. Empty legs typically sit 25–75% below the equivalent full charter, and the live figure is confirmed on enquiry.
Is the price per seat or for the whole jet?
For the whole aircraft. Divide it by the number of people travelling to get the per-person cost. That is why empty legs are best value for groups of four or more.
When is the best time to find empty legs in the US?
Fly against the flow. Spring northbound out of Florida, after the holiday weekends out of Aspen, and the day after a major event such as the Super Bowl or a Grand Prix, when aircraft that dropped passengers head home.
Can I book a US empty leg at short notice?
Yes, and short notice is often when the value appears, because the operator wants to fill the flight before it leaves. Some legs list only a day or two before departure, so a standing alert works better than checking now and then.
Do US empty legs include taxes?
Ask. US commercial air transportation carries a 7.5% federal excise tax, and the quote should make clear whether it is included. A good broker gives you the all-in figure before you commit.
Are US empty legs safe?
They are the same aircraft and crew that would fly the route as a full-price charter, operating under the same FAA rules for on-demand charter. The discount reflects the operator's logistics, not lower standards.
Can I fly from Europe to the US on an empty leg?
Occasionally. Transatlantic legs exist but are much rarer than domestic ones, because fewer aircraft cross and many wait for their clients. Our guide to transatlantic empty leg flights covers how to catch one.
