Can you book an empty leg return flight?

An empty leg return flight is the question almost everyone asks after finding a good one-way deal: can I get home the same way? The honest answer is that an empty leg only ever goes in one direction, because it is a single repositioning flight. There is no such thing as a return ticket on one. What you can do is put together a return trip from parts: a second empty leg going the other way, a one-way charter home, an airline seat, or a round-trip charter that beats all of them.

This guide explains how each combination works, what it typically saves, and how to tell when the clever combination costs more than simply chartering the round trip.

Can you book an empty leg return flight?

Not as a single booking. An empty leg is a specific aircraft flying a specific route on a specific date because a different client booked a one-way trip. Once it lands, that aircraft has its own next job. It won't wait for you, and it won't come back for you unless someone else books it to.

So a "round trip empty leg" is really two separate things you have to line up: a leg out, and a way home. Sometimes both directions can be empty legs. More often, one direction is an empty leg and the other is something else. The saving applies only to the part that is an empty leg, which is why it pays to look at the whole trip before celebrating the outbound price.

Why empty legs only go one way

Every empty leg exists because an aircraft is in the wrong place. A client flies London to Nice one way; the jet needs to get back to London, or on to Geneva for its next booking. That repositioning flight is the leg. It is created by someone else's plans, so its date, time and direction are fixed by those plans, not yours. Our cornerstone guide, what is an empty leg flight, explains how operators create and price them.

For a matching return leg to exist, a second, unrelated booking has to leave another aircraft needing to fly your route in the opposite direction, on a date that suits you. That does happen, especially on busy corridors, but it is a coincidence rather than a product. Our guide to one-way charter vs empty leg covers the economics behind this in more depth.

Your options for the return, compared

There are five realistic ways to build a return trip around an empty leg. They differ in cost, and even more in certainty.

Savings are our house range for an empty leg against the equivalent charter on the same aircraft and route, applied only to the leg that is an empty leg. Indicative only; the live figure is confirmed on enquiry.

The pattern is clear. Every option that uses an empty leg saves money on that leg and gives up some certainty on it. Only a round-trip charter gives you both directions on your terms, and it is the price every combination should be compared against.

Pairing an empty leg with a one-way charter home

This is the most common way to build a private jet return leg around an empty leg, and the one that most often disappoints on price. Here is why.

A dedicated one-way charter has to cover the cost of getting the aircraft to you and, often, back to its base afterwards: the positioning or "ferry" cost. As our one-way charter guide explains, that is why a true one-way charter rarely costs dramatically less than a return trip on the same aircraft. On London to Nice, our house figures put a light-jet one-way charter at around £9,000–£14,000, against around £4,000–£7,000 for an empty leg on the same route.

So if you catch an empty leg out and then book a one-way charter home, you have saved on the outbound but paid close to full price, ferry fee included, on the way back. Depending on where the aircraft is based, the total can land close to what a round-trip charter would have cost in the first place.

How to make it work

• Get a round-trip quote first. Before booking the combination, ask what a round trip on a similar aircraft would cost. That is your benchmark.
• Fly home from a busy hub. A one-way charter from an airport where plenty of aircraft are based, such as Nice or Geneva in season, needs less positioning, so it tends to price better.
• Keep watching for a leg home. Book the one-way only once you need certainty. Until then, an alert on the return route may turn up something cheaper.
• Match the aircraft class to the group. The empty leg out may have been a larger jet than you need; the charter home doesn't have to be.

A worked example: London to Nice for six

Put house figures against one corridor and the point becomes concrete. Take a light jet, London to Nice, for a group of six, using the indicative ranges from our cost guides.

Indicative house figures for a light jet on London–Nice; the live figure on any trip is confirmed on enquiry.

Two things stand out. Pairing an empty leg with a one-way charter home costs more than a round trip on an aircraft that is already in position. And two empty legs only clearly beat the round trip when the round-trip quote has to include repositioning. The combination is still worth having in your toolkit, but only after you've seen the round-trip number.

Can you get a round trip empty leg?

Sometimes, on the right corridor. The best chance comes where travel patterns naturally create legs in both directions within a few days. Our guide to empty leg flights UK notes that on London to Ibiza in summer, outbound legs cluster on Friday and Saturday and return legs on Sunday and Monday. That is about as close as the market gets to a natural round trip. London to Nice (our private jet hire Nice page covers the airports) and London to Geneva can produce several options a week in season, which raises the odds of a match in each direction.

Be realistic about the risk. Any empty leg can be cancelled or rescheduled if the charter behind it changes. With two legs, each carries that risk separately, so the chance that both fly exactly as listed is lower than for either one alone. That is fine for a flexible weekend and too low for anything that matters. Our guide to what happens when an empty leg is cancelled covers your options if one falls through.

The reverse: charter out, empty leg home

If your trip has a fixed start but a flexible finish, flip the usual approach. Book a dedicated charter for the outbound, so you arrive on time for the wedding, the meeting or the opening night. Then set an alert for an empty leg home, and give yourself a window of a few days to catch one. For a whole party, our guide to chartering a private jet for a wedding covers sizing the aircraft and splitting the cost.

This works well after events and at the end of a season, when many aircraft are leaving the same place at once. Legs out of the Mediterranean in early autumn and out of the Alps after the big ski weekends are the classic examples. If nothing turns up, you fall back on a one-way charter or an airline seat, and you've lost nothing by waiting.

Worked example: charter out, empty leg home from Geneva

Here is the reverse approach on a winter corridor. Four friends are flying London to Geneva for a ski week. Their arrival is fixed by the chalet booking on Saturday, but they can come home any day from Saturday to Monday. London to Geneva is about an hour and a half in the air, and a light or midsize jet suits four people with ski bags.

Indicative house figures, whole aircraft, London–Geneva, light or midsize jet. Each one-way charter includes the aircraft's positioning, and the aircraft goes home during the week, so two one-way charters cost roughly double one. Ski weekends are peak dates, when prices typically run 15–30% above the benchmark. The live figure is confirmed on enquiry.

The return window is what makes this work. The end of a ski week is exactly when many aircraft leave the Alps, some of them empty, so a three-day window gives the group several chances of a match. They set a route alert for Geneva to London as soon as the outbound is booked, then decide on the fallback on Sunday evening if nothing has appeared. The worst case is the second row, which is no worse than chartering both ways would have been.

Empty leg out, airline home

For couples and small groups on routes with good airline links, this is often the cheapest combination. You take the private experience on the outbound, at an empty-leg price, and fly home on a scheduled flight. On short European routes, a premium airline seat for two can cost far less than any private option for the return.

The trade-off is the experience on the way back: terminals, queues and fixed times. Whether that matters depends on why you were flying private in the first place. Our guide to empty leg vs business class works through when the private option is worth it on cost alone.

How to make private jet return flights cheap

There is no trick that turns a round trip into a pair of guaranteed empty legs, but a few habits make cheap private jet return flights far more likely.

1. Watch both directions from the start. Set alerts for the outbound and the return at the same time. Our guide to how to find empty legs explains how.
2. Keep the return flexible. A window of two or three days for the trip home multiplies the legs that can match.
3. Accept nearby airports. A leg into or out of a neighbouring airfield may suit you just as well.
4. Book the certain leg last. Book the dedicated charter or airline seat only when you need it, so a leg still has time to appear.
5. Travel as a group. You pay for the whole aircraft, so the per-person figure falls with every extra seat filled.

Empty leg return flight checklist

Before you commit to any combination, run through these points. They take five minutes and catch the mistakes that cost the most.

• Price the benchmark. Ask for a round-trip charter quote on a similar aircraft for your dates. Every combination is measured against it.
• Decide which direction is fixed. Book that direction as a confirmed charter or airline seat. Use the empty leg on the direction that can move.
• Write down the fallback. Know what you will book if the leg doesn't appear or is withdrawn, and roughly what it costs, so the decision isn't made in a panic.
• Check both aircraft. The leg out and the flight home may be different types. Make sure each takes your group and your bags.
• Read both sets of terms. An empty leg can be withdrawn if the original charter changes, and a one-way charter has its own cancellation terms. Know what you get back in each case.
• Watch the return early. Set an alert for the way home on the day you book the way out, not the day before you fly.

If the numbers don't work once you've done this, that is useful information too. A round trip you can rely on is better value than a combination that saves a little and risks a great deal.

When a round-trip charter is simply better

Sometimes the clever combination isn't worth it. A round-trip charter wins when both dates are fixed, when you're staying only a day or two, or when the destination is remote enough that no legs are likely in either direction. For short stays, the operator may keep the aircraft and crew with you rather than fly them away and back, and the quote reflects that, including any crew overnight costs.

The rule is simple: get a round-trip quote, then see whether any combination beats it once you add up both directions. Our guide to private jet charter cost shows what goes into that benchmark. If nothing beats it, book the round trip and enjoy the certainty.

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