Miami’s Real Private Jet Hub Is Opa-locka: KOPF Handles 6.8x the Empty Legs of MIA
Florida is the empty leg capital of the United States, but its private jet map looks nothing like its airline map. Over the last twelve months, 105,318 unique empty leg listings on the SkyAccess marketplace touched a Florida airport, and the busiest field in the state is not Miami International. It is Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport, an executive field most travelers have never typed into a search box, and it handles 6.8 times the empty leg activity of MIA.
The key numbers
- 105,318 unique empty leg listings touched a Florida airport in the trailing twelve months (departures August 27, 2025 to August 27, 2026, pulled September 2, 2026)
- 6.8x: Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (KOPF) recorded 20,822 empty leg touches versus 3,073 at Miami International (KMIA)
- Naples is #2: Naples Municipal Airport (KAPF) out-touches every airport in Fort Lauderdale
- 27.6 percent of Florida-touching empty legs stay entirely inside the state (29,105 intra-Florida listings)
- 5.2x seasonality: March 2026 peaked at 15,069 Florida-touching listings versus 2,920 in July 2026
Miami’s private jet capital is not MIA
Ask most people to name Miami’s aviation hub and they will say Miami International. On the empty leg board, MIA barely registers. Miami International recorded 3,073 empty leg touches in the window, which puts it twelfth in the state, behind Orlando Executive and Jacksonville. Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport, across town, recorded 20,822, which is 6.8 times MIA’s total and about 70 percent more than the number two airport in the state.
This is not a Miami quirk. It is how private aviation works everywhere, and Florida shows it in its purest form: business aviation concentrates at dedicated executive fields, where there are no airline banks to queue behind, FBOs are built for private traffic, and slot pressure is low. The commercial giant of South Florida is a footnote in this market. The business aviation field is the market.
Florida’s twelve busiest empty leg airports
An accounting note before the table. The statewide figure of 105,318 counts unique listings. The per-airport figures below count touches at that airport: a flight counts once at every airport it touches, so a leg from Naples to Opa-locka appears in both the KAPF row and the KOPF row. That means the airport rows sum to more than the unique statewide figure, by design. The two units answer different questions and should not be added together.
| Rank | Airport | Code | Metro | Empty leg touches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport | KOPF | Miami | 20,822 |
| 2 | Naples Municipal Airport | KAPF | Naples | 12,277 |
| 3 | President Donald J. Trump International Airport | KDJT | West Palm Beach | 11,762 |
| 4 | Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport | KFXE | Fort Lauderdale | 9,120 |
| 5 | Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport | KFLL | Fort Lauderdale | 6,859 |
| 6 | Boca Raton Airport | KBCT | Boca Raton | 6,583 |
| 7 | Witham Field | KSUA | Stuart | 6,482 |
| 8 | Sarasota Bradenton International Airport | KSRQ | Sarasota/Bradenton | 6,024 |
| 9 | Tampa International Airport | KTPA | Tampa | 5,443 |
| 10 | Jacksonville International Airport | KJAX | Jacksonville | 3,711 |
| 11 | Orlando Executive Airport | KORL | Orlando | 3,679 |
| 12 | Miami International Airport | KMIA | Miami | 3,073 |
The number three airport deserves its own mention: President Donald J. Trump International Airport in West Palm Beach logged 11,762 touches, and we have a full traffic profile of KDJT from earlier in this series.
The surprise runner-up: Naples
The second finding is quieter but just as counterintuitive. Naples Municipal Airport, a single municipal field serving a Gulf Coast town, recorded 12,277 empty leg touches. That beats Fort Lauderdale Executive (9,120), Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International (6,859), and everything else in Broward County. Naples is not a stopover market. It is a destination market with the wealth density to generate its own gravity, and the corridor data below shows exactly where that gravity pulls.
The Naples-Opa-locka shuttle
Of the 105,318 Florida-touching listings, 29,105, or 27.6 percent, never left the state. And within that intra-Florida traffic, one corridor dominates: Naples to Opa-locka. KAPF to KOPF is the single busiest directional pair at 464 listings, and the reverse direction, KOPF to KAPF, is second at 439. Combined, the two directions add up to 903 listings, a cross-state shuttle between Gulf Coast wealth and Miami’s executive hub that runs in both directions nearly evenly.
| Rank | From | To | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | KAPF (Naples) | KOPF (Miami) | 464 |
| 2 | KOPF (Miami) | KAPF (Naples) | 439 |
| 3 | KDJT (West Palm Beach) | KAPF (Naples) | 358 |
| 4 | KAPF (Naples) | KDJT (West Palm Beach) | 271 |
| 5 | KOPF (Miami) | KTPA (Tampa) | 255 |
| 6 | KOPF (Miami) | KSUA (Stuart) | 245 |
| 7 | KSUA (Stuart) | KOPF (Miami) | 244 |
| 8 | KOPF (Miami) | KSRQ (Sarasota/Bradenton) | 243 |
| 9 | KSRQ (Sarasota/Bradenton) | KOPF (Miami) | 237 |
| 10 | KTPA (Tampa) | KOPF (Miami) | 237 |
Notice the pattern in the table: every one of the ten busiest intra-Florida pairs has Opa-locka or Naples on at least one end. The state’s internal private jet network is a hub-and-spoke system, and the hubs are a business aviation field and a municipal airport.
The snowbird arc: March runs 5.2x July
Florida’s empty leg supply follows the snowbird calendar with almost textbook regularity. Marketplace listings touching Florida climb through the fall, hold a high plateau through the winter, peak in March, and collapse through the summer. March 2026 recorded 15,069 Florida-touching listings against 2,920 in July 2026, roughly a 5.2x swing from peak to trough.
| Month | Florida-touching listings |
|---|---|
| Sep 2025 | 4,551 |
| Oct 2025 | 7,230 |
| Nov 2025 | 8,573 |
| Dec 2025 | 11,493 |
| Jan 2026 | 10,422 |
| Feb 2026 | 11,974 |
| Mar 2026 | 15,069 |
| Apr 2026 | 13,792 |
| May 2026 | 10,481 |
| Jun 2026 | 6,062 |
| Jul 2026 | 2,920 |
Two caveats. First, the edge months August 2025 and August 2026 are excluded: each sits partly outside the analysis window, and because the median empty leg is listed only days before departure, edge months are censored on top of being partial. Second, this arc describes empty leg listings on the SkyAccess marketplace, not total Florida air traffic. It is a supply curve for one market, not a census of the sky.
Six of the twelve are pure business aviation fields
Half of Florida’s top twelve are dedicated business aviation airports with no scheduled airline service at all: Miami-Opa Locka Executive, Naples Municipal, Fort Lauderdale Executive, Boca Raton, Witham Field in Stuart, and Orlando Executive. This mirrors what we found when we ranked all fifty states by private jet empty leg activity: the market runs through business aviation and executive fields, not commercial hubs. Florida just demonstrates it at the top of the table, with the state’s number one and number two airports both invisible to anyone shopping airline routes.
What this means if you are booking
The practical lesson is simple: search the business aviation field, not the airline hub. A traveler filtering for Miami empty legs by MIA sees a twelfth-place airport; the real inventory is on the KOPF empty legs page. The same goes for Naples (KAPF) and West Palm Beach (KDJT), the state’s two and three.
Second lesson: alerts beat searching. Our published lead-time analysis of 518,350 listings found the median empty leg appears just 3.2 days before takeoff. Inventory that exists today mostly did not exist last week, so a saved alert on a route or airport will catch flights a manual search never sees. You can browse the current board of Florida empty leg flights or the full national inventory of live empty leg flights to start.
Methodology
All figures come from SkyAccess marketplace listings. The dataset was pulled on September 2, 2026 and covers departures from August 27, 2025 to August 27, 2026, the same trailing-12-month window as our published states ranking, with deleted listings excluded.
Units. Two units appear in this story and they are not interchangeable. Statewide and monthly figures count unique listings: 105,318 unique empty leg listings touched at least one Florida airport in the window, and 29,105 of those (27.6 percent) had both endpoints in Florida. Per-airport figures count touches: a listing counts once at every airport it touches, so an intra-Florida leg appears at two airports and the airport rows sum to more than the unique statewide total.
Reconciliation with the states ranking. The published US states ranking reports Florida at 134,360 endpoint touches for this window. There, an intra-Florida flight contributes two touches, one per endpoint. Measured as unique listings, Florida is 105,318. Both figures describe the same board, and the states post discloses the relationship.
Seasonality. The monthly series excludes the window-censored edge months of August 2025 and August 2026, which have partial coverage compounded by the 3.2-day median listing lead time. The series describes marketplace listing volume, not total air traffic.
No year-over-year claims. Marketplace coverage grew over the period, so we make no year-over-year comparisons; the numbers describe this window only.
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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