Empty leg flights from London Stansted Airport

Stansted has the longest runway of the airports London business aviation normally uses, just over three thousand metres of it, and business aviation terminals set well away from the airline terminal. That combination makes it the London field for large aircraft: corporate airliners, government flights and long range jets arriving from North America, the Gulf and Asia.

It is also one of the cheaper London fields on the ground and has room to park, which is why aircraft move here when other airports fill up. For anyone watching repositioning sectors, that overflow is worth understanding, because it produces flights that were never planned to be here at all.

Empty legs at Stansted right now

Operators release sectors through the day and the useful ones rarely last long. If nothing on the board fits, tell us the route and the dates you can work with and we will come back to you when something does, including movements that are never published anywhere.

Departing from London Stansted

Arriving into London Stansted

Where Stansted sectors come from

The mix here is different from the dedicated business fields, and two of the three sources have nothing to do with holidays.

The corridors that produce sectors here

Stansted skews longer than the other London fields. The short European runs exist, but the aircraft that live here are bigger and the sectors that matter go further.

Flexibility is worth more than patience

This is the most useful thing to understand about sectors into London.

When an operator finishes a job in Nice and needs the aircraft back in the London area, it does not care greatly which field it lands at. It will aim for Farnborough, Stansted or Biggin Hill depending on where its next assignment starts, where it can park cheaply and what the hours allow. The sector is the same flight either way.

One note on vocabulary while we are here, because it causes confusion when you start looking. European operators often call these flights empty sectors rather than empty legs, and within the industry they are also known as one way flights, ferry flights or deadheads. They all describe the same thing.

The airport in detail

A separate side of the airport

This is the detail that surprises people who have only flown privately from dedicated business fields. Stansted shares a runway with one of the busiest low cost airline operations in Europe, and on paper that sounds like a reason to avoid it.

In practice the business aviation terminals sit on their own side of the airport, away from the airline terminal and its crowds, and the taxi to the runway is usually short. The runway itself is shared, so at a busy hour a departure may wait for a gap in the airline traffic, but on the ground the journey is as quiet as at a dedicated business field.

The night question, answered honestly

Stansted is often described as the round the clock option for a late arrival into London. That needs qualifying, because the airport being open and business aviation being able to use it are two different things.

What this means for you is simple. For a late movement, no London field is a safe assumption: Farnborough closes in the evening, Biggin Hill at 23:00 on weekdays and earlier at weekends, Luton and Stansted are constrained at night, and London Oxford, which can extend its hours to 23:59 on request, is one of the few remaining options. Tell us the realistic arrival time rather than the optimistic one, and we will plan the airport around it.

Four handlers

Stansted offers a wide choice of handler, and the four are different rather than interchangeable.

On an empty leg the handler comes with the sector rather than being chosen. Which one you are using is confirmed in the flight brief, along with the address and the crew contact, and the handlers work from different buildings, so this is worth reading before you set off.

What the ground costs

Stansted is often the value option among the London fields. Parking is the clearest example: space is plentiful and a long stay usually costs less here than at Luton, which is exactly why operators leave aircraft at Stansted between jobs.

None of this reaches you on an empty leg, where the airport comes with the sector. It matters when you are comparing charter quotes, and it is a real reason a Stansted departure can undercut the same aircraft elsewhere around London.

Getting into London

Stansted is a long way out by road and does not pretend otherwise. What it has instead is a fast rail link and an easy road, both of which behave better in the evening peak than the M25 does. These are typical off peak times.

The rail link is the thing that makes Stansted work despite the distance. Trains run into Liverpool Street from a station under the airline terminal, a short drive from the business aviation terminals. The journey is about fifty minutes, and it does not care what the M11 is doing. For anyone heading to the City rather than to Mayfair, that is frequently quicker door to door than a car from a closer airport.

Empty leg calendar for London Stansted, month by month

Stansted has a flatter year than the dedicated business fields, because so much of its traffic is long haul and corporate rather than seasonal. The exception is high summer, when it absorbs what the other airports cannot park.

September, October, March and April are the months to aim for, and September and October are among the most productive weeks in Europe as a whole: summer fleets move north, islands empty towards the mainland, and the Alpine positioning follows in November. If your trip falls in the summer season, and above all between June and September, settle the evening timings first and the airport second, because that is the season when the night cutoff decides everything else.

Three situations, three answers

Travelling with a dog or a cat

Stansted is one of the airports in the London area where a dog, cat or ferret may be brought into the country on a private or charter flight, alongside Luton, Farnborough, Biggin Hill and London Oxford. Northolt and London City are not on the list, which matters when you are flying an animal home.

The operator has to be on the approved list and the route has to be approved too, and that pairing is checked for every booking rather than assumed. Practically, the animal's health details go to the handler at least twenty four hours ahead so that clearance can be arranged, and on arrival the animal is checked before it continues the journey with you. When you leave the country, the requirements are those of your destination rather than Britain's.

Questions about flying from Stansted

Call +44 7857 574938, message the same number on WhatsApp, or write to flight@empty-leg.co.uk. We are based at London Luton and we place sectors into Stansted every week.