How an empty leg is priced
Where the 75% comes from, what sets the exact figure, and the condition the price does not show.
Read this guide
Guide
The Sunday after the Yacht Show: empty legs out of Nice
The Cannes Yachting Festival (8–13 September 2026) and the Monaco Yacht Show (23–26 September) bring hundreds of private aircraft into Nice, and most leave in the 48 hours after each closes. Many go home empty. Those days are the year's densest supply of empty legs between the Riviera and northern Europe, at up to about 75% off.
September on the Riviera, as an airport sees it
Two yacht shows two weeks apart — Cannes from 8 to 13 September, Monaco from 23 to 26 — turn Nice Côte d'Azur into one of Europe's busiest business aviation airports for a month. Aircraft arrive in the days before each show and leave in the day or two after. That pattern, an arrival wave followed by a departure wave, is exactly the shape that produces empty legs: aircraft flying one direction with passengers and the other without.
The mechanics are in our guide to how an empty leg is priced. This page is about the calendar: when the legs appear, in which direction, and how someone in the Netherlands catches one.
The September wave, direction by direction
| When | Direction | Why | For whom |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5–8 September | Southbound into Nice | Aircraft positioning for Cannes; some fly down empty to collect | A cheap way down for the Cannes festival or a September week |
| 13–15 September | Northbound out of Nice | Cannes closes; visitors leave, aircraft return to base | A cheap way home after Cannes, or after a week on the coast |
| 20–23 September | Southbound into Nice | Positioning for Monaco | A cheap way down for the show |
| 26–28 September | Northbound out of Nice | The Monaco exodus — the densest supply of the year | A cheap way home after the show; the one to plan for |
The northbound wave after Monaco is the one worth planning around. Aircraft based in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Britain all leave at once, and a share of them leave empty because their passengers are staying on a yacht for another week. If you need to come home from the Riviera at the end of September and your day is flexible, this is the cheapest week of the year to do it.
How to actually catch one
- Give a window, not a date. "Home between 26 and 29 September" matches legs; "27 September at 14:00" does not. Two or three days of flexibility is the whole difference.
- Be flexible on the Dutch end. An aircraft based at Rotterdam goes to Rotterdam; one based at Eindhoven goes to Eindhoven. Insisting on Schiphol excludes legs that would have worked. See our Dutch airports guide for how close the fields are.
- Register early, decide fast. Legs appear when the booking that creates them is confirmed, and they are sold to whoever says yes first. A registered route with a standing yes is how they are caught.
- Pair it with a normal outbound. The usual structure is a normal charter down and an empty leg back — the return-leg guide calls it the cheapest return that exists, and the show week is when it exists most.
The condition, stated plainly
An empty leg out of Nice after the show exists because somebody else booked the flight down. If their plans change — they stay another day, they move the aircraft to Olbia — the leg changes or vanishes, sometimes hours before departure, and the operator owes you your money back and nothing else. That is the price of the discount. It is a good deal for someone who could take a scheduled flight home if it fell through, and a bad one for someone with a board meeting on Monday morning.
The same pattern, in May
The Grand Prix in late May and the Cannes Film Festival before it produce the same two-wave shape at higher intensity, and the Monday after the race is the other great empty-leg day out of Nice. Our Monaco Grand Prix guide covers that week; the mechanics are identical.
We do not publish a list, because no list is complete and the legs move. We do watch the market every day. Register the route and the window, or send it on WhatsApp, and we will tell you when something fits.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Why are there empty legs after the Monaco Yacht Show?
Because hundreds of aircraft leave Nice in the same 48 hours and many of them are one-way: they brought passengers who are staying on, or they are returning to base with nobody aboard. Each of those returns is an empty leg, and the Saturday and Sunday after the show — and the days after the Grand Prix in May — are the densest supply of northbound empty legs from Nice all year.
Are there empty legs going south, too?
Yes, in the run-up. Aircraft position into Nice ahead of the Cannes Yachting Festival in early September and again before the Monaco show, and some fly down empty to collect passengers. Southbound legs in the second and third weeks of September are common, less so than the northbound wave afterwards.
How cheap, and what is the catch?
Published discounts run up to about 75% of the normal charter rate. The catch is the empty leg's own condition: it exists because of somebody else's booking and can vanish if that changes, with no obligation on the operator to replace it. Take one when your dates are loose and missing it would be an inconvenience, not a crisis. Our guide to how empty legs are priced has the full mechanics.
Can I book one now for September 2026?
Legs appear when the bookings that create them are confirmed, typically days to a couple of weeks ahead, so the answer is to register the route and the window with us and let us watch for a match. We do not publish a live list — nobody's list is complete — but we see the market daily.
Read also
The return leg: round trip or two one-ways?
The aircraft waits, flies home, or you book twice. What each does to the price, with the crossover.
Read this guideSources
- Cannes Yachting Festival — practical information (8–13 September 2026) — consulted 2026-09-20.
- Monaco Yacht Show — official site (23–26 September 2026) — consulted 2026-09-20.
- Mercury Jets — Empty leg flights to Amsterdam (discount range) — consulted 2026-09-20.
- L'VOYAGE — The real risks of booking an empty leg flight — consulted 2026-09-20.
Late September
Home from the Riviera for less
Direction, window, party size. We watch the market and call you when a leg appears.
Last updated by the Mondial Jets team.