Every State Ranked by Private Jet Empty Leg Activity, and the Airport That Leads in Each
Updated September 29, 2026: counts now exclude exact duplicate copies of the same leg and deleted, withdrawn or cancelled listings, and the window now covers the 12 months to September 28, 2026. The figures below reflect that correction, which also moved 18 states in the ranking and changed the busiest airport in North Carolina, Wisconsin and, by a margin of two legs, North Dakota.
Florida tops a 51-way ranking of empty legs on the SkyAccess marketplace over the 12 months to September 28, 2026, and in many states the busiest airport is not the one with the airline terminals.
- 322,814 unique empty legs touched a US airport as an origin or destination on SkyAccess in the 12 months to September 28, 2026.
- Florida leads with 115,265 endpoint touches, representing 89,800 unique legs, more than a quarter of all national activity.
- Teterboro Airport (KTEB) alone recorded 24,579 legs, more than the statewide endpoint touch totals of 45 states and the District of Columbia.
- In 6 of the 10 busiest states, the top airport is a dedicated business aviation field with no scheduled commercial airline service.
The national picture
Empty legs are the repositioning flights that private jet operators publish when an aircraft must fly without paying passengers, typically after dropping off one charter and before picking up the next. Over the 12 months to September 28, 2026, 322,814 unique empty legs touched a US airport as an origin or destination on the SkyAccess marketplace, a dataset large enough to map where this activity actually concentrates, state by state.
The counts are listed empty legs with departure dates in the window, not confirmed flown flights; to find upcoming ones, visitors can search live empty leg flights by origin and destination on SkyAccess.
The geography is lopsided. Activity clusters along the Florida peninsula, the Northeast corridor, Southern California, and Texas, with Colorado and Nevada next; the Dakotas, Alaska, and Hawaii rank lowest among the states. The top five states each posted more than 26,000 endpoint touches; the four lowest-ranked states and the District of Columbia each posted fewer than 1,200. One accounting note before reading the table: a flight between two states counts toward both states’ totals, so the state rows sum to more than the unique national figure. A flight between two airports in the same state contributes two touches to that state, so the table also shows each state’s unique leg count alongside its touch total; ranks follow touch totals. The full disclosure appears in the methodology, and ongoing monthly trends are tracked in the SkyAccess Empty Leg Index.
The top of the table: Florida through New York
Florida is not merely first; it is first by a margin that reshapes the rest of the list. Its 115,265 endpoint touches exceed the combined total of the 31 lowest-ranked states plus the District of Columbia, ranks 20 through 51. The state’s busiest field is Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (KOPF) with 17,674 legs, a dedicated business aviation airport north of Miami International.
California follows with 74,008 touches, led by Van Nuys Airport (KVNY) at 15,607 legs, the San Fernando Valley field that has long served as Los Angeles’ private aviation gateway. Texas posts 56,340 touches, topped by Dallas Love Field (KDAL) with 8,261 legs; the full Texas empty leg breakdown maps the corridors behind that total.
Among the 10 busiest states, fourth-ranked New Jersey is the clearest case of a single airport carrying a state. Teterboro Airport (KTEB) recorded 24,579 legs, most of the state’s 31,128 unique legs. Teterboro alone out-counts the statewide endpoint touch totals of 45 states and the District of Columbia; only Florida, California, Texas, New Jersey itself, and New York posted higher totals. New York rounds out the top five with 26,069 touches, and its busiest field is not a New York City airport at all but Westchester County Airport (KHPN) with 10,967 legs.
The surprises farther down
Nebraska ranks 18th with 10,221 endpoint touches, ahead of Michigan (8,225) and Wisconsin (6,097), on the strength of two airports: Eppley Airfield in Omaha, which logged 4,458 legs, and Lincoln Airport (KLNK), with 3,969. Its total is lifted by 2,661 legs that both started and ended in Nebraska, each counted at both ends; by unique legs, Utah, Indiana, and Michigan move ahead and Nebraska would rank 21st. Wyoming, the state with the smallest population, ranks 30th by volume with 4,351 endpoint touches, carried by Jackson Hole Airport (KJAC), which accounts for 3,121 of its 4,291 unique legs.
The busiest-airport column holds its own surprises. Iowa’s leader is Iowa City Municipal Airport (KIOW), not Des Moines. Mississippi’s is University-Oxford Airport (KUOX), a field owned by the University of Mississippi. And West Virginia’s is Greenbrier Valley Airport (KLWB), the airport serving The Greenbrier resort, evidence that in lower-volume states a single resort or campus can lead the market.
Why the busiest airport is often not the commercial hub
In 6 of the 10 busiest states, the top airport is a dedicated business aviation field with no scheduled commercial airline service: Miami-Opa Locka (KOPF), Van Nuys (KVNY), Teterboro (KTEB), Centennial (KAPA), DeKalb-Peachtree (KPDK), and Scottsdale (KSDL). The other four leaders, Dallas Love Field (KDAL), Harry Reid International (KLAS), Westchester County (KHPN), and Charlotte Douglas International (KCLT), do host airline service.
The pattern reflects how private aviation actually operates. Reliever airports offer dedicated terminals for private flights, faster ground handling, and none of the congestion or slot pressure of a major hub, while still sitting close to the city centers travelers want to reach. Over the 12 months, Van Nuys logged 15,607 legs against 2,431 at LAX, and DeKalb-Peachtree 4,542 against 802 at Hartsfield-Jackson: a jet repositioning in the Los Angeles or Atlanta area is far more likely to use the business aviation field than the airline hub. The same dynamic appears in many states beyond the top 10, with Chicago Executive Airport (KPWK) leading Illinois, Laurence G. Hanscom Field (KBED) leading Massachusetts, Oakland County International (KPTK) leading Michigan, Spirit of St. Louis (KSUS) leading Missouri, Boeing Field (KBFI) leading Washington, and Lakefront Airport (KNEW) leading Louisiana.
What this means for empty leg travelers
For travelers, the table doubles as a shopping map. Volume translates directly into choice: a searcher in Florida, California, or the New York metro area sees a steady flow of repositioning flights, while a searcher in North Dakota or Alaska is watching a market measured in hundreds of legs per year, where flexibility on dates and airports matters far more.
The second lesson is to search by the right airport. In many states the empty leg market runs through a business aviation field rather than the airport with the airline terminals, so a traveler filtering only for the commercial hub can miss most of the local supply. In smaller markets, activity concentrates heavily at one field: Wilmington Airport accounts for 1,097 of Delaware’s 1,335 unique legs, Patrick Leahy Burlington International for 901 of Vermont’s 1,272, and every one of the District of Columbia’s 184 legs touched Ronald Reagan Washington National (KDCA). SkyAccess publishes airport-level breakdowns like its data profile of private jet traffic at Trump International Airport (KDJT) for travelers who want to go deeper than the state view.
Methodology
Figures are proprietary SkyAccess marketplace data pulled on Sep. 29, 2026 from the production database. The dataset covers unique empty legs on the SkyAccess marketplace departing in the 12 months to September 28, 2026 (September 29, 2025 through September 28, 2026), counting only legs whose departure dates have passed. These are listed empty legs, and the data does not confirm that each one operated. A leg is identified by its departure airport, arrival airport, departure time, aircraft tail number and aircraft model, so repeat copies of a flight recorded with the same details count once. Copies of the same flight recorded by two sources with different departure times are not merged. Deleted, withdrawn or cancelled listings and internal-only (operator-private) flights are excluded; listings deleted after the pull date drop out of later pulls, so totals can differ marginally between pull dates. A total of 322,814 unique legs touched a US airport as an origin or destination in the window. A flight between two states counts toward both states’ totals, and a flight within a single state counts twice in that state’s total, once per endpoint, so state figures are endpoint touches rather than unique legs and the 51 state rows sum to more than the unique national total. Florida’s 115,265 touches, for example, correspond to 89,800 unique legs. Each state’s busiest airport is the field with the most unique legs touching it as origin or destination, with airports grouped by ICAO code; KDCA is assigned to the District of Columbia in the airport reference data. Comparative claims in this story were computed from the same dataset; Teterboro’s legs are compared with each state’s endpoint touch total, the larger of the two state measures, which makes that comparison conservative. These are marketplace listings, not FAA operations counts and not a census of all private jet traffic; marketplace coverage varies by region and changed substantially over the window, so state-to-state comparisons describe activity on the marketplace and no conclusions about market growth should be drawn.
SkyAccess is a live private jet and empty leg marketplace at skyaccess.com, listing 5,000+ live empty leg flights from 900+ FAA Part 135 (and international equivalent) certified charter operators. This story is part of SkyAccess Data & Research, our index of original marketplace data, methodology standards, and custom pulls for journalists. For how these legs cross the ocean, see the transatlantic empty leg data story. For how close to takeoff these listings appear, see the empty leg lead-time data. For a live holiday-weekend cut of the same board, see the Labor Day weekend data story. For the full deep-dive on the #1 state, see the Florida empty leg data story.
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