All about Empty Legs Flights. Restrictions on Planeside Transportation
Greetings and Welcome to Thursday’s episode of Private Jet Insider,
In today’s update for the upcoming week:
--Empty Legs Flights and how they are priced;
--Brokers will see charter wholesale prices in Eastern United States rise by about 7 to 10 percent this upcoming week;
--More airports are restricting planeside transportation.
Hi, my name is Anastasia and I am your Private Jet Insider.
Every week we bring you this 3-minute episode that covers private jet charter for jetsetters, charter brokers, and charter operators.
Our goal Is to share the information we have collected and analyzed to help you make better private jet charter flight purchasing and selling decisions.
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So, let’s get right to it.
If you fly private, you probably most likely have heard the term “Empty Leg Flight”.
This is typically used to describe a flight that moves the airplane to its next paid booking or to their home base. The premise and marketing hype suggests that the plane may fly empty if it is unable to get a paid booking. And you would think that a price for such fly should be substantially reduced when compared to a full price fare.
So, we have analyzed over 300 published empty leg flights for price and availability. Our findings show that the price offered by operators or brokers for such “Empty flight” is only 15 to 20 percent cheaper than buying the flight at full price. The price gets better the closer you get to departure time. Best prices are when your trip matches perfectly with the announced empty leg.
What is interesting that most of the empty pricing was very close to the price provided by reputable floating fleets. So, make sure to price compare even if you are getting and empty flight pricing.
One last thing to note about the empty leg flights is that they are a BYproduct of the originally booked flight.
This means that if the original flight cancels, your booking may be canceled leaving you searching for an alternative option potentially in the last minute.
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Dear Charter Brokers, thanks for your feedback on our last week episode. We are adding a bit of data to this one as a result of your feedback.
In the upcoming week the aircraft inventory is fairly balanced across US, and while we still see requests exceeding availability, the inventory has returned to normal balanced pattern.
A review of fuel prices shows that the Eastern states are at the peak price point with New York airports fuel prices posting around $5.60 per gallon wholesale. This is reflected in operator quotes for the flights originating on the East Coast and represent a 7 to 10 percent overall increase of the quotes that are being sent out.
One more interesting fact is that number of duplicate requests, this is when more than one broker is looking for same routing, is down this week. I guess price conscious folks are flying less in the next few days.
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And now for the Operators.
In the next 7 days it looks like the inventory coverage in North America has returned to normal positioning. There still appears to be a shortage of availability in Upper Central and Central US. So, making sure you respond to these requests is a great idea and could land you a profitable booking if you are in position for that area.
For floater fleet in the upcoming week we still recommend avoiding Southeast and Eastern airports, as we see significant abundance of inventory versus demand for it.
And last, but not least: Teeterborro and Fort Lauderdale joined a few other major airports in restricting planeside transportation accommodations.
If your clients require planeside pickups, make sure you check with the FBO prior to your flight.
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Until next Thursday.
Please remember to fly safe, make sure to hit the ‘like’ button below and subscribe to get notified once the new episode is released. ✈
