What an empty leg actually is
Charter aircraft rarely fly neat round trips. A family charters a plane from Manila to El Nido; the aircraft then has to get to Coron, where its next job starts, or home to its base. Those connecting flights — the repositioning sectors — happen whether or not anyone is aboard. An empty leg is exactly that flight, with the seats put up for sale instead of flying vacant.
Nothing about the flight itself is discounted. It's the same aircraft and the same crew flying a sector the operator had already committed to. What's different is the economics: every peso a passenger pays on a leg that was flying anyway is better than the zero the operator would otherwise collect. That's why discounts on empty legs are deep rather than token.
The catch, honestly stated
A normal charter bends around your plans; an empty leg is the one case where you bend around the aircraft's. Three things follow from that:
- The route and date are fixed. The aircraft is going where its schedule sends it, when its schedule sends it. You take the flight as listed or not at all.
- They appear at short notice. An empty leg only exists once the charter that creates it is confirmed, so the best ones often surface days — not months — before departure.
- They can move. If the originating charter shifts, the repositioning flight shifts with it. Operators confirm final timing with you directly, but an empty leg is the wrong tool for a connection you cannot miss.
None of this matters much if you're already in El Nido with loose plans and a listed flight to Coron leaves Thursday morning. It matters a great deal if you have an international departure four hours after landing. Match the tool to the trip.
Per seat or whole aircraft — read the price
Empty legs on Avian are sold two ways, and the listing tells you which you're looking at. Some are priced per seat: you book the seats you need and share the cabin, paying only for your own places. Others are sold as the whole aircraft at one flat price — the sector is flying regardless, so the price doesn't change whether two of you board or six. A whole-aircraft leg split among a full group is routinely the best per-person deal on the board.
How to actually catch one
- Keep a flexible day in your itinerary. Empty legs reward travellers who can say "we'll do El Nido until a good flight to Coron shows up." Build the slack in and the discount finds you.
- Watch the busy sectors. Repositioning happens where charters cluster: the El Nido–Coron crossing, hops out of Puerto Princesa, and the runs between Manila and the island strips.
- Check the board often, and book fast. Listings carry real, finite seat counts shared by everyone looking at the page. When a leg suits your dates, the seats you're staring at are the seats that exist — hesitation is how you watch them go.
- Bring your group. On per-seat legs more people simply costs more, but on whole-aircraft legs a full cabin divides one flat price — check which type you're booking before you do the math.
If chartering in this part of the world is new to you, start with our case for flying private within Palawan — empty legs are the cheapest door into everything it describes.