Empty Leg Flights: Champagne Flavored Air Travel At Beer-Budget Prices?

Even though we the 99-percent can only dream of owning our very own private jet, is there a way to experience flying in one on the cheap? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Unless you are a 1980s era legacy rock star, billionaire business magnate, A-List Hollywood actor / movie producer types, etc. we, the 99-percent, can probably only dream of travelling by private jet and so overwhelmingly most of our experiences of flying commercial airlines will undoubtedly involve brutal early morning check-ins, the enforced surrendering of toiletries to airport security – or TSA in the United States – to scowling customs officers and – always a certainty – delays. But, like they say in contemporary cold medicine commercials, there’s another way – one that also happens to be substantially better in every detail. Basically, you need to get yourself to one of those “empty leg flights”. 

Empty leg flights are private jet flights where there happens to be nobody onboard, at least not until you come in and the good news is on short and intermediate range flights, you are paying at almost the price of flying coach in a typical commercial airline flight.  Private jet charter firms, realizing that their aircraft have to return to base after they have ferried the first client to somewhere swanky at some point, have taken to offering these return “empty leg flights” for cut-price rates. It is only logical that these private jet charter firms make some extra money out of someone’s one-way trip and the consumer gets a cut-price private jet experience and the flexibility to just show up 15 minutes before take-off, get right on board and fly. 

Free champagne and swanky caviar-filled catering will be available as standard on an empty leg flight says Mehdi Dialmy of Privatefly, one of the private jet charter firms providing empty leg flights. If Privatefly does it this way, undoubtedly, their competitors will also pamper their empty leg flight clients to attract customers. But timing is the key for availing such budget-priced luxurious civil aviation indulgencies.