How to design an empty legs page clients come back to

Most charter websites have exactly one reason to be visited: someone needs a flight. The empty legs page is the exception. Empty legs change every week, they are priced to move, and the people who want them check often. Designed well, it is the page that keeps a charter site alive between bookings. Designed badly, it is a banner that says "up to 75% off" and links to a form.

We built the empty legs section for Reliance Jets, a charter operator with an owned fleet, as a live feed of real availability rather than a marketing page. This guide is what we learned doing it, and what we would tell any operator planning one.

What an empty leg is, and why the page matters

An empty leg is a repositioning flight: the aircraft has to fly somewhere without passengers to reach its next paying trip, so the operator sells the seat at a discount instead of flying it empty. It is one of the few genuine bargains in private aviation, and it is perishable. A leg that departs on Thursday is worth nothing on Friday.

That combination is what makes the page valuable. Perishable inventory gives a visitor a reason to come back on their own, without an email campaign or an ad. Returning visitors are a meaningful signal in this category, and very few pages on a charter site can earn them.

What the page should show

A useful empty legs listing answers the questions a buyer asks in the order they ask them:

• Route: departure and arrival airports, with the city names people actually search for, not only ICAO codes.
• Date and flexibility: the departure date, and whether the time is fixed or has a window.
• Aircraft: the type and category, linked to the aircraft's own page if the operator has one. Someone looking at a Citation X is not looking for a King Air.
• Seats: how many passengers the aircraft takes.
• Price, or how to get it: a price when the operator publishes one, or a clear one-tap request when it does not.
• The catch, stated plainly: empty legs can be cancelled if the original trip moves. Saying so up front builds more trust than hiding it in small print.

Structure: a feed, not a brochure

The most common mistake is treating empty legs as content. A paragraph explaining what empty legs are, three stock photos and a contact form is a brochure. The page should be the inventory itself, with the explanation kept short and placed below it.

What works:

1. The list first. The first screen shows real, current legs. If there are none this week, say so, and offer an alert instead of an empty page.
2. Filters that match intent. Departure region, date range and aircraft size cover almost every search. More filters than that slow people down.
3. One leg, one action. Each listing gets its own inquiry, pre-filled with the route, date and aircraft, so the conversation starts from the exact flight the client chose.
4. Updated automatically. If the legs come from the operator's scheduling system or a shared spreadsheet, the page should read from it directly. A page that depends on someone remembering to update it will go stale in a month.

Tie each leg to the fleet

For an operator that owns aircraft, the empty legs page and the fleet pages should feed each other. On the Reliance Jets site each aircraft has its own page with specs, photography, capacity and range, and an inquiry tied to that tail number. An empty leg on that aircraft links straight to it, so a client weighing a discounted flight can see exactly what they would be flying in.

This is also what separates an operator from a broker on the page. A broker can list legs from anyone. An operator can show its own aircraft, flown by its own crews, and the site should make that obvious.

Make it findable

Empty legs are searched in a very specific way: "empty leg flights from Miami", "empty legs New York to Palm Beach", "cheap private jet one way". A page that only lists codes and dates gives search engines and AI assistants nothing to match. A few things help:

• Use city and airport names in the listing text, not only codes.
• Keep a short, plain explanation on the page of what empty legs are and how booking works, written as answers to the questions people ask.
• Add an FAQ for the questions that come up on every call: can a leg be cancelled, can I bring pets, can I change the time.
• Keep the page fast on a phone. Most of these searches happen on one.

Mistakes that turn it into a dead banner

• A static discount claim ("save up to 75%") with no actual flights behind it.
• Legs that already departed still listed weeks later, which tells the visitor nobody is watching the page.
• A single generic form at the bottom instead of an action on each leg.
• Hiding the page three levels deep in the navigation, when it is the page returning visitors want most.

Frequently asked questions

What is an empty leg flight?

A repositioning flight a private jet has to fly without passengers to reach its next trip. Operators sell these seats at a discount rather than fly the aircraft empty, which makes them one of the few bargains in private aviation.

Should a charter website have an empty legs page?

If the operator regularly has repositioning flights, yes. It is the one page on a charter site that gives clients a reason to return weekly, and it converts price-aware clients who would not book a full charter.

How often should an empty legs page be updated?

As often as the legs change, which usually means automatically. The page should read from the operator's schedule or a shared list, and departed legs should disappear on their own.

Who designed the Reliance Jets empty legs section?

beterdesign, as the design partner of N5 Marketing Inc. The Reliance Jets site is built around its owned fleet and a live empty legs feed. More in our guide to charter operator website design.

If your empty legs live in a PDF or a banner today, that is usually a quick fix with an outsized effect. Tell us about your operation and we will tell you how we would structure it.