A one-way charter is not half of a round trip. Everyone assumes it is, because the invoice has one flight on it. It is not, and the reason is a line the client never sees: the aircraft still has to get to the departure airport, and it still has to get home afterwards.

That second flight — the deadhead, the repositioning leg, the empty leg — is usually billed at the same hourly rate as the leg you are paying for. It is the single largest reason a one-way quote can approach the price of a round trip, and it is the reason the interesting question is not “how much is one way” but “where does the aircraft have to be afterwards.”

Here is how the arithmetic works, using this office’s own published route estimates, and what to ask to make it cheaper.

The short version

A one-way to the Caribbean in winter costs about 75 percent of a round trip, because the aircraft is already south for the season and has to come back regardless.
A one-way across the country to Van Nuys costs about 59 percent, because the aircraft has to cross the country twice.
The deadhead is normally billed at the full hourly rate, not at a discount.
The empty leg is a separate product — a discounted seat on a flight the operator is flying anyway, and it is the cheapest way to fly one way if your dates are flexible.
“One-way” is not a price. It is a trip with no return, and the price depends entirely on where the aircraft ends up.

What a deadhead is

A deadhead is a flight with no paying passengers. The aircraft flies somewhere so that it can be somewhere else.

The industry has several names for it and they all mean the same thing: repositioning leg, ferry flight, deadhead, empty leg, one-way transient. When the operator talks about a “repositioning segment with no passengers” they mean the flight that brings the aircraft to the airport where you are waiting.

Here is the point that matters: the deadhead is flown at the operator’s cost and billed at the operator’s rate. The aircraft burns the same fuel, the crew are on the same duty clock, and the airframe accrues the same maintenance hours whether or not anyone is in the cabin. A published broker estimate puts it plainly: flight time covers every hour the aircraft flies for your trip, including any return or positioning legs.

What is not the same is the price of the deadhead. An operator has two ways to fill a repositioning leg:

Fly it empty and bill it to your charter. The deadhead becomes a cost you carry.
Sell it to someone else as a discounted empty leg. The leg still happens, but it pays for itself.

Which of the two happens depends on the date, the aircraft, and who asks. That is why two one-way quotes for the same route on the same day can differ by a wide margin.

The rule of the aircraft’s position

Everything follows from one fact: the price of a charter is a function of the aircraft’s position, and the position of the aircraft is not a function of your trip.

An aircraft is somewhere. It got there because of a previous trip, and it has to be somewhere tomorrow. If what you want is the flight it is already going to fly, you are buying a seat on a flight that was going to happen. If what you want is somewhere it is not going, someone has to fly it there first, and you are paying for that flight.

This is why the destination matters more than the origin. From New York, a one-way to Miami is a relatively good deal, because there is a lot of New York aircraft that has to get to Florida in January anyway. A one-way from New York to somewhere nobody is going is expensive, because the aircraft has to be sent.

The corollary is that the return leg is the expensive part of a one-way, and you have just bought it. Many clients are surprised by this. When you fly one way from Teterboro to Miami, the aircraft is now in Miami. The next client who wants it in New York pays for the flight back. And if there is no next client, the operator flies it back empty and charges you, because the alternative is that your trip ends with a jet stranded in Florida, which is worse.

The numbers, from this office’s own estimates

The route guides publish a one-way range and a round-trip range for every aircraft category on every route. Comparing the midpoints of those ranges, for every category on every route in each group, gives the share of a round trip that a one-way already carries:

Route type	One-way share	Range	One-way price	Estimates
The Caribbean, in winter	75%	66% to 76%	$14,000 to $79,000	12
Short hops, under two hours	62%	61% to 63%	$3,500 to $23,000	24
Transatlantic	62%	60% to 64%	$45,000 to $197,000	9
Van Nuys, coast to coast	59%	56% to 60%	$26,000 to $120,000	5
Long domestic, over two hours	58%	56% to 69%	$8,000 to $95,000	41

Three things fall out of that table.

The Caribbean is the extreme case, and it is seasonal. Nassau, Turks and Caicos and St Barths all sit between 66 and 76 percent. A one-way to Nassau in a heavy jet is about $54,000 against a round trip of about $71,000. You are buying three-quarters of the trip for three-quarters of the money, and the missing quarter is the flight home. The reason is not distance. It is that the aircraft is over-wintering in the south — it flies down in November and waits out the season, and it has to come back in the spring. Whether you are on board makes no difference to the aircraft’s position in April.

Van Nuys is the opposite case, and it is the one that catches people. A one-way to Van Nuys costs about 59 percent of a round trip, which sounds like a saving until you understand the shape of it. The New York aircraft has to cross the country to collect you and then cross it again to go home. You are not buying a flight to Los Angeles; you are buying a flight to Los Angeles plus a repositioning flight that is roughly the same length.

Long domestic routes are the cheapest one-ways, and that is a fleet-planning fact, not a distance fact. Chicago, Miami, Naples, Palm Beach, Aspen, Jackson Hole and Vail all come out between 56 and 69 percent. There is a large fleet in the United States and it is distributed the way demand is, so more of these routes have an aircraft that is already nearby.

The four things that move the number

1. Where the aircraft sleeps

The cheapest one-way is the one where the aircraft was going to end up anyway. That is a scheduling fact, and it is why the same route can be 30 percent cheaper on one Tuesday than on a Thursday.

The published broker estimates put an empty leg at up to 75 percent off the standard rate, and put the saving from choosing an already-positioned aircraft at up to 30 percent on a one-way. Those are broker numbers rather than tariffs, and the actual figure depends on the date and the aircraft. But the direction is not in doubt: the empty leg is the cheapest one-way product there is, and it exists because the operator was going to fly the leg anyway.

2. How long the aircraft is away

This is the cost that catches people on a “one-way with a stopover.” If the aircraft waits at the destination for three days, the crew do their duty time and then they need rest, and the operator has to put a second crew on or fly a relief crew out. On an unscheduled two-pilot crew, 14 CFR 135.267(b) is the wall: during any 24 consecutive hours, the total flight time of the assigned flight, added to any other commercial flying by that crewmember, may not exceed 10 hours for a two-pilot crew. Paragraph (d) requires at least 10 consecutive hours of rest during the 24-hour period before the planned completion of the assignment, and paragraph (f) requires at least 13 rest periods of 24 consecutive hours each in each calendar quarter.

So a three-day stopover in Nassau is not three days of free time. It is crew accommodation, per diem, and a legal duty-time bill that somebody has to pay. If the aircraft is going to sit somewhere, the client should know what the operator’s cost is and whether the quote includes it.

3. Whether the date is peak

Demand is not evenly spread across the year, and the operator’s aircraft are not either.

The published peak dates are the obvious ones: Thanksgiving, the Christmas and New Year holidays, Super Bowl weekend, and the big winter events. Brokers put the premium at 10 to 20 percent inside 14 days of travel, and at 20 to 30 percent around the peak dates themselves. Those are broker estimates, and they are not the whole story.

The more useful observation is that peak pricing on a one-way hits the empty leg harder than the dedicated aircraft. A client who needs to be somewhere on a specific date has to take whatever aircraft is available, and on a peak date there are fewer of them. A client who can move by a day has a much larger pool of empty legs to choose from, and the empty legs are the cheap ones.

4. Whether the flight is sold as a one-way at all

This is the one that catches out experienced flyers. A one-way charter is a contract for a flight in one direction. The return is not a second contract that happens to be cheaper; it is a separate transaction, usually with a separate aircraft, a separate crew and a separate price. Two one-ways in a row are often more expensive than one round trip, and they are always more expensive than a round trip where the operator can keep the same crew and aircraft together.

The arithmetic behind that is straightforward. A round trip lets the operator bill one positioning leg, because the aircraft comes back anyway. Two one-ways let the operator bill two.

The questions worth asking

Is the repositioning in the quote, and is it broken out? Ask to see it as a separate line. It is often inside the price, and it is often the largest single component of what you are paying for.

Where does the aircraft go after your trip? This is the question that determines whether you are getting a good price or a bad one. If the answer is “back to Teterboro,” you are paying for a round trip. If the answer is “it stays in the Caribbean until March,” you are being charged for a repositioning leg that the operator may sell to someone else.

What happens if the aircraft is sold as an empty leg instead? The honest answer is that the operator may cancel or move an empty leg if the paying customer on the original trip changes. An empty leg is a discounted product on a flight that is scheduled around someone else. It is fine for a trip that can move by a day. It is not fine for a wedding.

Is there a discount for the empty leg version of this trip? If the operator has an aircraft that is going that way anyway, the price should reflect that. Ask, and ask for the comparison between the quoted one-way and the empty-leg price for the same route.

What is the cancellation and change policy? 14 CFR 295.26 requires an air charter broker to make prompt refunds of all monies paid for charter air transportation when the transportation cannot be performed. But the commercial terms — the cancellation fee, the credit, the deadline — are contractual, and on a one-way they matter more, because a cancelled one-way usually strands the aircraft in the wrong place and the operator will charge for moving it back.

Is the quote all-in? 14 CFR 295.24(a)(4) requires an air charter broker, on request, to disclose “the total cost of the air transportation paid by the charterer to or through the air charter broker, including any air charter broker or carrier-imposed fees or government-imposed taxes and fees.” And 295.24(a)(5) requires disclosure of “the existence of any fees and their amounts collected by third-parties, if known (or a good faith estimate if not known), including fuel, landing fees, and aircraft parking or hangar fees, for which the charterer will be responsible for paying directly.” If a quote says “taxes and fees extra,” it does not satisfy those two paragraphs as written.

The empty leg, honestly

An empty leg is a real product and it is a good deal, with two conditions attached.

The condition: the date, the time and the route are set by the operator. The flight can be cancelled or moved if the paying customer on the original trip changes. There is no return leg on an empty leg either, which is the point — you are buying the outbound flight at a discount because the aircraft was going to fly it.

The other condition: you are on someone else’s schedule. It suits a trip where you can shift by a day and have a backup. It does not suit a meeting you cannot miss.

Most people who say they would never take an empty leg have never been told the price of the alternative. The published broker figures put an empty leg at up to 75 percent off standard rate. On a transatlantic one-way that is the difference between a good price and an impossible one.

What Jake does

Before quoting a one-way, Jake establishes three things: where the aircraft is now, where it has to be next, and what the operator is doing with the gap. Those three answers set the price, and they are the same three answers whether the trip is one way or round trip.

Then the quote is built as a round trip internally and the return leg is shown, because a client who can see the deadhead can make a decision about it. Sometimes the answer is that a round trip is cheaper, and Jake says so. Sometimes the client genuinely cannot be in two places, and the quote is a one-way with the repositioning broken out so the client can see exactly what they are paying for and what they are getting.

If the trip is one way and the date can move, the quote request says so, and the empty-leg options go on the table next to the dedicated aircraft.

If you want a one-way priced with the repositioning shown separately, call +1 (862) 485-3510 or request a quote. Put the dates, the passenger count and the airport in the notes, and say whether the date is fixed. Ask for the itemised sheet and the deadhead will be on it.

One-way charters and empty legs