Love Field Outlists DFW 8.8 to 1: Where to Find Empty Leg Flights in Texas

Ask where the empty legs are in Texas and the honest answer starts with a number that looks like a typo. Over the twelve months ending September 4, 2026, SkyAccess marketplace listings recorded 9,420 listing touches at Dallas Love Field (KDAL) and 1,073 at Dallas Fort Worth International (KDFW). That is an 8.8 to 1 gap in favor of Love Field. Houston repeats the pattern even more sharply: William P. Hobby (KHOU) logged 8,172 touches against 778 at George Bush Intercontinental (KIAH), a 10.5 to 1 gap. In SkyAccess marketplace listings, Texas empty leg supply concentrates away from the giant hubs.

The state as a whole is enormous. Across the same window, 48,790 unique empty leg listings touched at least one Texas airport, and 14,894 of those flew entirely within the state. That volume makes Texas No. 3 nationally for empty leg activity, behind only Florida and California, as we documented in our ranking of all 50 states. Here is where that activity actually sits, airport by airport, corridor by corridor, and month by month.

The 13 busiest Texas airports for empty legs

One accounting note before the table, because we count carefully here: these figures are listing touches, not unique flights. A leg that touches two Texas airports, say a Dallas to Houston flight, counts once for each airport. The full arithmetic is in the methodology section.

Rank	Airport	Code	Listing touches
1	Dallas Love Field	KDAL	9,420
2	William P. Hobby	KHOU	8,172
3	Austin-Bergstrom	KAUS	8,063
4	San Antonio International	KSAT	6,301
5	El Paso International	KELP	4,934
6	Fort Worth Meacham	KFTW	4,055
7	Addison	KADS	2,278
8	Sugar Land Regional	KSGR	1,653
9	Midland International	KMAF	1,281
10	Dallas Fort Worth International	KDFW	1,073
11	David Wayne Hooks	KDWH	934
12	Conroe-North Houston	KCXO	844
13	Lubbock Preston Smith	KLBB	842

The top five combine for 36,890 touches, more than half of the statewide total. And the pattern from the opening paragraph runs all the way down the list. In Dallas, the supply lives at Love Field, Fort Worth Meacham, and Addison, not at the giant international hub. In Houston, it lives at William P. Hobby, Sugar Land Regional, David Wayne Hooks, and Conroe-North Houston, while George Bush Intercontinental, with 778 touches, does not crack the top 13 at all. If you are searching for empty legs in either metro, the biggest name on the map is, in our listings, the wrong place to look.

The Texas Triangle, measured

Of the 48,790 listings touching Texas, 14,894 had both ends inside the state. The busiest intra-Texas city pairs, with both directions summed, form the familiar Triangle:

• Dallas (KDAL) and Houston (KHOU): 839 listings (429 outbound from Dallas, 410 from Houston)
• Dallas and Austin: 721 listings (365 and 356)
• Austin and Houston: 627 listings (318 and 309)
• San Antonio and Austin: 621 listings (317 and 304)
• San Antonio and Houston: 575 listings (300 and 275)

Those five pairs total 3,383 listings, and the directional splits are strikingly even. No pair in the top five leans more than 25 listings in one direction, so whichever Triangle city you start from, the listings run close to an even split in each direction.

Where Texas empty legs go when they leave

Looking only at legs departing Texas for out-of-state destinations, Dallas dominates. Six of the top eight directional corridors originate there:

• Dallas to Scottsdale, Arizona: 132
• Dallas to Denver: 126
• Dallas to Las Vegas: 122
• El Paso to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico: 121
• Houston to New Orleans: 115
• Dallas to Van Nuys, California: 106
• Dallas to Aspen: 103
• Dallas to Teterboro, New Jersey: 97

The two exceptions are notable in their own right. El Paso to Cabo San Lucas, at 121 listings, is the fourth busiest outbound corridor in the state and the only international route on the list. Houston to New Orleans, at 115, is Houston’s lone entry in the top eight.

May peaks, August empties out

Texas empty leg supply is strongly seasonal. Counting complete months only, listings touching a Texas airport ran: October 2025, 3,561; November, 3,667; December, 4,187; January 2026, 3,716; February, 4,359; March, 5,742; April, 5,442; May, 5,781; June, 4,535; July, 2,666; August, 2,272.

Spring is the season. March, April, and May each cleared 5,400 listings, with May’s 5,781 the peak for the year. Then the floor drops: July fell to 2,666 and August to 2,272, the trough. Peak to trough, that is a 2.5x swing. May put two and a half times as many listings on the calendar as August did.

What is on the board right now

At the time of this data pull, 989 empty leg listings touching a Texas airport with future departures were live on the SkyAccess empty leg board. Marketplace-wide, SkyAccess carries 5,000+ live empty leg flights from 900+ certified charter operators; every figure in this story comes from SkyAccess marketplace listings over the twelve-month window. For the national picture updated monthly, see the Empty Leg Index. For Texas specifically, the airport pages for Dallas Love Field, William P. Hobby, Austin-Bergstrom, San Antonio International, and El Paso International show what is departing each field today.

Methodology

All figures were pulled on September 4, 2026 from the SkyAccess marketplace database and cover listings with departure times from September 4, 2025 through September 4, 2026, with deleted listings excluded. These are SkyAccess marketplace empty leg listings, not airport operations counts, not FAA traffic data, and not a census of all private aviation.

Unique listings versus touches: 48,790 unique listings touched at least one Texas airport. Airport-level figures count touches, so a listing touching two Texas airports counts once at each. Because 14,894 listings had both ends in Texas, statewide touches total 48,790 plus 14,894, or 63,684. Our published 50-state ranking reported 63,679 Texas touches on a window shifted by 8 days; the figures reconcile.

Monthly counts include complete months only. September 2025 and September 2026 sit at the edges of the window as partial months and are excluded. Texas Triangle city-pair figures sum both directions; out-of-state corridor figures are directional and count Texas departures only. The live-listing count of 989 reflects the moment of the pull.