Guide
There are plenty of articles answering this question, so normally there would be no reason to write another one. The difference here is that we are not guessing. We record every empty leg the charter operators publish, thousands of flights a month, which means we can finally show what these flights actually cost: by aircraft type, by route, and by seat.
Updated 3 September 2026. Figures read on 3 September 2026 from our own board. Sample sizes are on every number.
We log a few thousand empty legs a month. In the thirty days to 3 September 2026 it was 3,052 new flights, every one of them taken from the charter operator that flies it. We do not read brokers, so nothing here is somebody reselling another company's aircraft with a margin on top.
Out of that flow, 1,091 flights were still upcoming on 3 September, departing between that day and 20 September 2027. 243 of them carried a price the operator had published, and 219 carried both a price and a seat count. Those 219 are what the rest of this page is built on.
Across the 89 priced in euros, the median empty leg costs 5,400 euros for the whole aircraft. Divided by the seats the operator listed, that is 622 euros a seat. The cheapest seat on the board today is 433 euros: a Cessna Citation CJ4 Gen 2 from Toulon to Nancy on 5 September, nine seats, 3,900 euros for the aircraft.
Medians of the euro-priced legs, only for types with at least three of them. The seat figure is the operator's own price divided by the seats the operator listed.
| Aircraft | Legs | Seats | Aircraft, EUR | Per seat, EUR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cessna Citation CJ4 Gen 2 | 60 | 9 | 5,100 | 567 |
| Hawker 900XP | 6 | 8 | 5,300 | 662 |
| Dassault Falcon 8X | 3 | 14 | 17,300 | 1,236 |
| Dassault Falcon 7X | 4 | 13 | 17,300 | 1,331 |
| Embraer Legacy 650 | 4 | 13 | 17,650 | 1,358 |
Six legs is a small sample and a median of six is a weak number. It is shown with its count rather than hidden inside an average of everything.
The pattern is the one you would expect. A light jet with nine seats puts the seat under 600 euros. A large cabin Falcon or Legacy, with more seats but a far higher block cost, lands somewhere over 1,200. What changes the answer is not the size of the cabin, it is how full you can make it.
That 622 is a division, not a fare. The operator sells the aircraft, not the seat. If you fly alone on that Citation you pay 3,900 euros, and your seat cost 3,900 euros. The 433 only exists if nine of you get on.
So the honest version of the headline is this: an empty leg turns a private jet into something a group of eight or nine can split. That is the whole trick, and it is why the maths only ever works for people travelling together.
Two more things the number does not include. Operators quote the flight, and what sits on top of it, landing fees, handling, catering, sometimes a passenger tax, varies by airport and by operator. And an empty leg goes where the aircraft was already going, on the date it was already going, which is the price you actually pay for the discount.
One thing to be careful about. An empty leg is one way. There is no return, and there is no such thing as a return seat: the aircraft is repositioning, and where it goes next is the operator's business, not yours. Of the 1,091 flights on our board today, only 204 had anything at all listed going back the other way inside the following week, and even those are separate flights, often from a different operator, that can sell or vanish on their own. Plan the way back as a scheduled flight, or as a second empty leg you find later, and treat it as a bonus if the timing ever lines up.
Of the 1,091 upcoming legs, 848 carry no published price at all. Their cards say price on enquiry, because that is what the operator published, and we would rather print that than invent a figure.
So every number on this page describes the 22 percent of the board that is priced. Whether the unpriced 78 percent would be cheaper or dearer, we do not know, and anyone who tells you they do is guessing.
This table is live. It reads our own listings when you open the page and divides each operator's published price by the seats they listed. Pick a currency: we do not convert between them here, because a converted figure is our arithmetic and the point of this page is the operator's.
| Route | Aircraft | Seats | Aircraft | Per seat | Departs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loading the board. | |||||
Listed price and listed seat count, exactly as the operator published them. A listing can be sold or withdrawn between our last check and your enquiry.
We have watched 622 legs disappear from operator sites before their departure date. Half of them were gone within 4.5 days of first appearing. A quarter went in under 2.8 days. Fifty four vanished in less than 24 hours.
That is the real cost of an empty leg, and it is not money. The flight you want is on the board for a few days and then it is somebody else's.
Across 3,928 legs we have timestamps for, the median appeared 8.7 days before departure. 1,780 of them, close to half, appeared inside the last week.
Which means searching two months out is mostly wasted effort. The list you want does not exist yet. Set an alert on the route and let it come to you, or check the city pages in the week you actually want to fly.
If you are one person with a fixed date and a fixed destination, an empty leg is a bad tool and a scheduled airline is a better one.
If you are six or eight people who can move a day either way, and you are looking at a route that already has traffic, the arithmetic on this page is real: today it is 433 euros a seat from Toulon, and 567 is the middle of the market on the aircraft type we see most.
Every number on this page was read on 3 September 2026 from our own record of what charter operators published, not from an industry estimate. Prices are the operator's own figure for the whole aircraft, and per seat is that figure divided by the seat count the operator listed, across the 219 upcoming flights that carry both.
We use medians rather than averages, because a single 130,000 dollar Global would drag an average anywhere. The live table above reads the same listings as they stand right now. The written figures are fixed to the date at the top of the page, and when we rerun them they will be restated with a new date rather than quietly edited.
Across the 89 upcoming empty legs priced in euros on our board on 3 September 2026, the median aircraft cost 5,400 euros and the median seat, that price divided by the seats the operator listed, was 622 euros. The cheapest was 433 euros a seat.
We do not record what the same flight would cost as a full charter, so we cannot give a discount percentage. What we can say is the operator's own published figure: on our board the median priced empty leg in euros is 5,400 for the whole aircraft, one way, and in pounds it is 13,000.
Not on an empty leg. The operator sells the whole aircraft, so an empty seat on a private jet is not sold on its own here. The per seat figures on this page are the listed price divided by the listed seats, which only holds if a group fills the cabin.
No. Operators sell the whole aircraft. The per seat figure is the listed price divided by the listed seat count, so it only holds if the cabin is full.
No. Of the 1,091 upcoming legs recorded on 3 September 2026, 243 carried a published price and 848 said price on enquiry.
No. An empty leg is a one way repositioning flight and there is no return, nor any such thing as a return seat. Of the 1,091 upcoming legs recorded on 3 September 2026, only 204 had any flight listed in the opposite direction within the following week, and those are separate flights that can be sold or withdrawn on their own.
Across 3,928 legs with timestamps, the median appeared 8.7 days before departure and 1,780 of them appeared within the last week before the flight.
See the last minute list for everything departing inside seven days, browse every city on the board, or go by aircraft type if the cabin matters more than the destination. If you operate aircraft and want your legs listed, start here.