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.

Two empty legs, out and back

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. 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 a specialized inquiry: give us both directions, your dates and how far you would travel to a nearby airport, and we check the listed legs and the ones operators have not published. If one direction is there and the other is not, we say so and quote the missing half as a charter.

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, out in the morning and back in the evening, 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. Many operators also price a minimum amount of flying for each day the aircraft is away, which is why a long stay somewhere the aircraft cannot go home from costs more than the hours in the air alone would suggest.

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.

One leg empty, one leg charter

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.

Two things to know. The empty leg half can still move until its operator confirms, so confirm it first and let the charter be quoted around it, not the other way round. And the two halves are two bookings: each has its own operator, its own final price and its own cancellation policy, stated in its own quote before you agree. If you would rather not juggle them, a specialized inquiry describing the whole trip lets us look at both halves together and come back with a price for each.

How to ask on UpLeg

• 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 FAA-certificated Part 135 operator.
• To check whether empty legs cover it: send a specialized inquiry with both directions and your dates. We look at what is listed and what is not, and quote a charter for whatever is missing.
• To see what is posted right now: search the board for each direction separately, and set a free flight alert on each 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.

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. 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.