1,692 Empty Leg Flights Are Listed for Labor Day Weekend, and the Board Is Up 33 Percent in Four Days
As of September 1, 2026, there are 1,692 live empty leg listings on the SkyAccess marketplace with departures between Friday, September 4 and Tuesday, September 8. Four days earlier the same board held 1,272. That is a 33 percent jump in four days, and if history is any guide, the board will keep filling in right up to the holiday itself.
The key numbers
- 1,692 live empty leg listings on the SkyAccess marketplace with departures September 4 to 8, 2026, as of the September 1 snapshot.
- Up 33 percent in four days: the same window held 1,272 live listings when we pulled it on August 28. Both figures are snapshots of the same board growing as the holiday approaches.
- Friday, September 4 is the biggest day with 470 listed departures.
- Labor Day itself, Monday, September 7, is second with 387.
The board is still filling in
The most important thing to understand about these numbers is that they are a snapshot, not a forecast. Empty legs are a byproduct of booked charter flights, so they appear on the board as operators confirm their schedules, and most of them appear late. Our published lead-time analysis of 518,350 listings found that the median empty leg appears 3.2 days before takeoff, and about a quarter appear inside 24 hours.
That is exactly why the same five-day window grew from 1,272 live listings on August 28 to 1,692 on September 1. The board you see today will not be the board on Friday. For a holiday weekend departure, with a median lead time of 3.2 days, the deepest inventory materializes in the final days before each departure.
Departures by day
Friday leads, which fits the classic long-weekend pattern of getting out ahead of the holiday. But the second-biggest day is Labor Day Monday itself, the return leg of the weekend.
| Departure day | Live empty leg listings |
|---|---|
| Fri Sep 4 | 470 |
| Sat Sep 5 | 231 |
| Sun Sep 6 | 301 |
| Mon Sep 7 (Labor Day) | 387 |
| Tue Sep 8 | 303 |
Where the jets are flying: the top US corridors
| From | To | Live listings |
|---|---|---|
| Washington Dulles (KIAD) | Teterboro (KTEB) | 6 |
| Reno-Tahoe (KRNO) | Black Rock City Airport (88NV), Gerlach NV | 6 |
| Las Vegas Harry Reid (KLAS) | Aspen-Pitkin County (KASE) | 5 |
| El Paso (KELP) | Lake Tahoe (KTVL) | 5 |
| Savannah (KSAV) | Miami-Opa Locka Executive (KOPF) | 5 |
| Las Vegas Harry Reid (KLAS) | John Wayne Orange County (KSNA) | 5 |
| Teterboro (KTEB) | Fort Lauderdale (KFLL) | 5 |
| Fort Lauderdale (KFLL) | Teterboro (KTEB) | 5 |
| Lincoln NE (KLNK) | Kearney NE (KEAR) | 5 |
| Teterboro (KTEB) | Westchester County (KHPN) | 5 |
| President Donald J. Trump International (KDJT) | Miami-Opa Locka Executive (KOPF) | 4 |
| Las Vegas Harry Reid (KLAS) | Van Nuys (KVNY) | 4 |
| Nantucket (KACK) | Atlantic City (KACY) | 4 |
The Burning Man exodus is on the board
The single most distinctive corridor in the dataset is Reno-Tahoe (KRNO) to Black Rock City Airport (88NV) at Gerlach, Nevada, with 6 live listings. Per burningman.org, Black Rock City rises from the dusty playa of the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada from August 30 through September 7, 2026, which means the burn ends on Labor Day itself. Jets positioning between Reno and the temporary playa airstrip during exactly this window are the private aviation signature of the event, and every one of those repositioning flights is a listed empty leg.
Vegas empties out in three directions
Las Vegas Harry Reid (KLAS) appears as the origin of three separate top corridors: 5 listings to Aspen-Pitkin County (KASE), 5 to John Wayne Orange County (KSNA), and 4 to Van Nuys (KVNY). That is aircraft flowing out of Vegas toward the Colorado mountains and both sides of the Los Angeles basin over the holiday window.
The Northeast-Florida shuttle runs both ways
The Northeast-to-Florida corridor shows up in both directions at once: Teterboro (KTEB) to Fort Lauderdale (KFLL) has 5 live listings, and Fort Lauderdale back to Teterboro has 5 of its own. Feeding the same Florida flow, Savannah (KSAV) to Miami-Opa Locka Executive (KOPF) has 5 listings and President Donald J. Trump International (KDJT) to Miami-Opa Locka has 4. Add Washington Dulles (KIAD) to Teterboro at 6, tied for the largest US pair in the snapshot, and the short Teterboro to Westchester County (KHPN) hop at 5, and the Eastern Seaboard accounts for a large share of the leaderboard. That is consistent with what we found when we ranked US states by empty leg activity: the Northeast and Florida dominate the national map.
End-of-summer signals
Two smaller corridors tell seasonal stories. Nantucket (KACK) to Atlantic City (KACY), with 4 listings, reads as the end-of-summer drawdown from the island. And in Nebraska, Lincoln (KLNK) to Kearney (KEAR) shows 5 listings, a cluster that coincides with Nebraska football hosting Ohio at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln on Saturday, September 5, 2026, at 11:00 AM CDT, per the huskers.com schedule. We can note the timing lines up with the home opener; we cannot say from the listing data alone that the game is the cause.
Europe: summer is not over yet
The European board over the same window skews toward routes where the season is still running.
| From | To | Live listings |
|---|---|---|
| London Biggin Hill (EGKB) | Paris-Le Bourget (LFPB) | 4 |
| Rome Ciampino (LIRA) | Ibiza (LEIB) | 4 |
| Larnaca (LCLK) | Tel Aviv Ben Gurion (LLBG) | 4 |
| Belgrade Nikola Tesla (LYBE) | Pisa (LIRP) | 4 |
Labor Day is a US holiday, but early September is still high season in the Mediterranean. Rome to Ibiza and the eastern Mediterranean shuttle between Larnaca and Tel Aviv sit alongside the year-round London to Paris business corridor and a Belgrade to Pisa run into Tuscany.
How to actually catch one
Three practical takeaways from the data for anyone hoping to ride one of these flights.
Alerts beat searching. Because the median listing appears 3.2 days before takeoff and a quarter appear inside 24 hours, manually refreshing a search is a losing game. Set an alert on the route you care about on the live empty leg board and let the listing come to you when it posts.
Check the business aviation fields, not just the big airports. The leaderboard above is dominated by dedicated business aviation airports: Teterboro, Opa Locka, Van Nuys, Biggin Hill, Le Bourget. If you are watching the New York area, watch Teterboro empty legs; for Miami, watch Opa Locka empty legs, not just the commercial hubs.
Flexibility is the whole game. An empty leg exists because an aircraft has to move anyway, so the date, time, and routing belong to the operator’s schedule, not yours. Travelers who can shift a day, in a window where Friday holds 470 listings and Saturday 231, have far more board to choose from.
Methodology
Counts are live SkyAccess marketplace listings pulled September 1, 2026, at approximately 18:55 UTC. The window covers listed departures from Friday, September 4 through Tuesday, September 8, 2026, and includes only live listings: future departures that have not been deleted. All figures are snapshots of a continuously updating board; the August 28 figure of 1,272 and the September 1 figure of 1,692 are two pulls of the same departure window, and the comparison describes the board growing as the holiday approaches, not a change in underlying flight activity. We make no year-over-year claims, since listing coverage grows over time and the comparison would not be apples to apples. Route pair counts reflect listings, not completed flights.
SkyAccess is a real-time private jet and empty leg marketplace at skyaccess.com, listing 5,000+ live empty leg flights from a network of 900+ certified charter operators. This story is part of SkyAccess Data & Research.
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