What is an empty leg?

As the name suggests, empty leg flights occur when an aircraft flies without passengers. This happens when the aircraft needs to reposition for its next scheduled flight. After dropping off passengers and needing to return to a base or move to another location for a subsequent booking, these jets fly without passengers. Since the cost of this repositioning flight has already been paid in the previous booking, you can purchase it at a significantly lower price than usual. This is why it's highly recommended to always check for potential empty legs when booking air ambulances.

Air ambulance operators can list their available empty legs on Avinode. These are visible and can be requested by you in two different locations within the system.

Empty legs in the Air Ambulance search result

In the Air Ambulance search result, you can select Empty Legs to see if there are any matching empty legs for your itinerary.

In this example, we searched for a flight from LOWS (Salzburg) to LFPB (Paris) on the 25th (indicated by the green line on the map). The search algorithm identified one possible empty leg, from Munich to Paris on the 24th, indicated by the blue line on the map. Although it isn't an exact match for the date or departure location, this is often not an issue because operators can be flexible with routes and sometimes dates. Go ahead and select the checkmark to add it to the flights you would like to request. 

Empty legs in the Empty legs page

You can also look for suitable empty legs on our separate Empty Leg page under Search → Empty Legs. The main difference between browsing empty legs here and using the Air Ambulance search is that it offers more flexibility with both itinerary and date. For example, you can view all empty legs departing from Europe without needing to specify a particular itinerary. Alternatively, you can find all empty legs leaving from New York by entering "New York" in the From field and leaving the other fields blank. To request an empty leg, simply click the play button on the right. 

This video provides additional information about the Empty Leg search.