Empty Leg List starts publishing weekly AI predictions for private jet repositioning flights

Empty Leg List has begun posting weekly forecasts for where the next empty leg private jet flight will appear, then publishing the score the following week. The company says the public prediction record is meant to make the market easier to use and to test whether the system can identify repeat routes.

Why it matters: - Empty Leg List is trying to make hard-to-find private jet repositioning flights easier to spot and compare. - The company is also testing whether AI can predict which routes will carry empty legs in a market where many flights are one-offs. - The forecast system could help travelers plan earlier and could improve matching between existing repositioning flights and passengers.

What happened: - Empty Leg List has started publishing weekly predictions for where the next empty leg will appear. - The first set includes 117 predictions for the week beginning 14 September 2026. - The first scores will be published on 21 September. - The company says each Monday it records predictions before the week begins, then compares them with what actually happens the following Monday. - The service has already read 5,737 empty leg flights since 30 July 2026. - Those flights came from 60 operator sources across 420 cities and 41 departure countries. - At the time of writing, 1,635 flights are live. - The listing system sees about 133 new flights each day.

The details: - An empty leg is a charter jet flight with no passengers onboard that is repositioning between paid jobs. - Operators sell those seats cheaply. - Empty leg flights are difficult to track because they are spread across dozens of operator websites, often appear only days before departure, and disappear once sold. - Antwerp to Ibiza on a Friday carried an empty leg in each of the six weeks recorded so far. - The return route also appeared every week in that period. - Those two routes produced 15 flights in total, and none had a published price. - Empty Leg List tested a larger statistical model across all routes, then discarded it because the data did not support it. - In the record, 2,768 of 2,885 route-and-weekday combinations appeared exactly once. - The company concluded that most empty legs are one-offs rather than repeat weekly patterns. - The site was built in five weeks using AI by a single person. - The live board is published as an open data feed in JSON and CSV, free and without a key. - Operator names are not published on the site and are not included in the feed. - Empty Leg List is a listing service and is not a broker, an operator, or a party to any booking. - The company takes no commission, and enquiries go directly to the operator that published the flight. - Empty Leg List reads empty leg flights from charter operators' websites three times a day and places them in one location with the operator's own price attached. - The service is operated by Publishing Office SRL, registered in Romania, VAT RO37770955.

Between the lines: - The company is drawing a sharp line between route prediction and environmental claims. - Empty leg flights do not reduce fuel burn on the flight itself because the aircraft is already scheduled to fly. - The potential benefit comes from avoiding an additional charter flight by matching a passenger to an existing repositioning leg. - Empty Leg List says it publishes a guide that separates defensible environmental claims from unsupported ones. - The decision to publish predictions before the week and scores afterward is designed to make the system auditable. - That choice also signals confidence that the model should be judged on measurable results, not marketing.

What's next: - Empty Leg List will keep publishing weekly predictions and then posting the results the following week. - The company says the first public performance scores will appear on 21 September. - More routes may prove repeatable, but the current record suggests the market still contains many single-appearance flights. - The open data feed should let outside users verify the company’s counts, route patterns, and prediction scores.

The bottom line: - Empty Leg List is turning empty leg discovery into a measurable prediction game, with public scores meant to prove whether AI can spot patterns in a market built on one-off flights.