Round trips on a private jet: empty leg or charter

Why are empty legs one-way?

An empty leg is a jet going somewhere for its own reasons: home to base after dropping a customer, or out to the airport where its next charter starts. It is one flight, in one direction, on the aircraft's schedule. The return you would want is not part of the deal, because the aircraft is not coming back; it is staying where it landed, or flying someone else somewhere else.

That is the whole reason the price is a fraction of a charter, and it is the reason a round trip does not fit the format. The guide to empty legs covers the trade in full; the short version is that you get the aircraft's route and dates at a discount, and a route is one way. This is important because it rules out the obvious shortcut: an operator cannot hold an empty leg for you and fly you back on the same terms, because there is no second empty leg unless another charter happens to create one.

Can two empty legs make a round trip?

Now and then it lines up. A jet repositions from New York to Palm Beach on a Friday and another, or the same one, repositions back on the Monday. If both are on the board, both fit your dates, and both cabins suit you, you can request both, and the trip costs a fraction of what the same aircraft would cost on your own schedule.

Three things make it rare. Both legs have to exist, and on many routes the repositioning traffic runs one way in a given week: south from Teterboro Airport on a Thursday, north again on a Sunday, and rarely the reverse. Both have to be confirmed, and each can move or vanish independently until its operator confirms, so the outbound can be solid while the return dissolves. And they are two bookings, often with two operators, two quotes and two cancellation policies, not one trip.

The way to find out is Trip Finder, one direction at a time: it shows every listed leg that fits each way, including legs from nearby airports and days, and sends your picks to us together, a request for each. If one direction is there and the other is not, set an alert for the missing half and we email you when a leg on it is listed. The table sets the four ways to build a round trip side by side.

How does a charter price a round trip?

A charter quote is one total for the whole trip, and for a round trip the operator has two ways to build it. The aircraft can wait for you at the destination, which costs crew time on the ground, a hotel for the crew if you stay overnight, and parking or hangar space for the aircraft. Or it can fly home after dropping you and come back to collect you, which costs two extra flights with nobody on board. The operator prices whichever is cheaper for your dates and puts that into the total.

For a day trip, Los Angeles to Las Vegas and back the same evening say, the aircraft almost always waits, and you are paying for the flying plus a crew day on the ground. For a trip of several days, the arithmetic depends on how far away the aircraft's base is and how long you stay: a short hop from a nearby base may be cheaper to fly twice, a long one is cheaper to keep on the ground. You do not have to work any of this out. Tell us the trip and the operator quotes the cheaper structure as one total for the whole aircraft; the charter cost guide explains what sits inside an hourly rate and what a quote adds to it, and the totals two operators quote for the same trip can differ significantly for these reasons alone.

Can you mix an empty leg and a charter?

Yes, and the middle path is real: fly out on an empty leg and charter the return, or charter out and ride an empty leg home. It works when one direction has a leg that fits and the other does not, and it can take a meaningful amount off a trip that would otherwise be a full round-trip charter.

The order matters, because the empty leg half can still move until its operator confirms while the charter half is solid once quoted. Four steps keep the uncertain half from unsettling the certain one.

1. Step 1. Request the empty leg half first and wait for the operator to confirm it. Until then it can move or vanish, and a charter quoted around an unconfirmed leg may have to be requoted.
2. Step 2. Once the leg is confirmed, ask for the charter half, quoted as a one-way on the date the leg now fixes. It is essential to do it in this order and not the other way round.
3. Step 3. Treat the two halves as two bookings: each has its own operator, its own final price and its own cancellation policy, stated in its own quote before you agree, and you pay each once, to whoever its quote names.
4. Step 4. If you would rather not juggle them, send the outbound trip from Trip Finder with the return in the notes, and we look at both halves together and come back with a price for each.

How do you ask on UpLeg?

Three doors, and which you open depends on how fixed the dates are.

1. Step 1. For a round trip on your dates: request a charter quote. Choose Round trip, give the return date, the passengers and the cabin you have in mind, and we come back with one total for both directions from an operator the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has certificated under 14 CFR Part 135.
2. Step 2. To check whether empty legs cover it: search each direction in Trip Finder and send what you find, with the return in the notes. We look at what is listed and what is not, and quote a charter for whatever is missing.
3. Step 3. To see what is posted right now: search the board for each direction separately. The Empty Leg Index shows the busiest routes on the board as of the moment you open it, which tells you how likely a return leg is.
4. Step 4. Set a free flight alert on each direction, so a matching leg reaches you by email when it appears.

None of this costs anything to ask: no deposit, no membership, no card on file. A request or an inquiry is not a booking, and nothing is owed until you have agreed to a total and the operator has confirmed. Reading the cancellation policy in each quote is essential on a round trip built from two bookings, because there are two of them and they can differ significantly.

What stays the same?

However the trip is put together, the same rules apply as for any booking through UpLeg. The operator is an FAA-certificated Part 135 carrier and is named to you before you pay; UpLeg is an air charter broker under 14 CFR Part 295, the Department of Transportation (DOT) rule for brokers, and according to section 295.24 that name is yours before you contract. You get one final price for the whole aircraft before anything is owed. You pay once, to the operator or to UpLeg, as your quote says, and never both for the same flight. And asking costs nothing: no deposit to request, no membership, no card on file.

If you are still deciding whether the trip is an empty leg trip or a charter trip, the guide on empty leg or charter settles it in one question, and how to book a private jet walks through what happens after you ask, from the request to the day of the flight. As of September 2026 the board re-reads every operator every half hour, so a return leg that appears on Tuesday is on the board by Tuesday lunchtime.