After six months hard work, emptylegcharter.com - an interactive website for business aircraft operators, customers and brokers - has recently been launched on the internet.

The purpose of the site, says UK broker International Air Charter plc, is to give operators and brokers a forum for selling their empty legs, and customers an opportunity to experience corporate aviation at more reasonable costs.

Md and ceo Hugh Courtenay told EBAN: "Emptylegcharter.com allows operators to submit their positioning flights for sale, for others to view on the site, at considerably reduced rates.

"This can be either a sector of a flight where passengers are flying only one way, and the aircraft is flying empty to or from its base, or indeed any flight sector where the aircraft is flying empty, without passengers."

Once operators have registered at the site - among those already to do so are Zurich's Swiss Global Aviation, and the UK's Executive Aviation and Falcon Jet Centre - they are able to enter as many empty legs as they have available and the price that they want for the charter. The system automatically bills in International Air Charter's commission and displays the amount.

Said Courtenay: "Clearly, the price that they will be asking will be a lot less than a standard one-way charter flight [because the round-trip charter flight has already been paid for].

"We earn our ten per cent commission by handling the booking from start to finish.

"We ensure that the customer gets all the information that he or she requires, we confirm the booking with the operator, pay the operator, the client pays us and the operator has virtually nothing to do.

In addition to empty legs, International Air Charter also offers short-term aircraft availability. "For example," said Courtenay, "if you tried to hire an executive jet down in Jeddah, the likelihood is that you'd have to get something in from Central Europe.

"Now, if we've got a trip down to Jeddah and the aircraft is sitting on the ground for three days in Jeddah, it's available for you to charter it."

Courtenay says the customer can also vary the empty leg to suit his needs. An empty leg from Milan back to London could easily become a Barcelona-London trip, for the sake of expenses such as the extra landing fee at Barcelona.

Said Courtenay: "It's still going to be cheaper than if you've got an aircraft in Barcelona to do the trip or if another one has to come and pick you up."

He added: "If no empty legs are available to match your search criteria, the site will automatically display empty leg availability from the closest ten airports.

"Should clients wish to view all empty legs available from a particular city/airport, the system is flexible in so much that it allows you to enter only the departure point and will display all matching empty legs."

Now based in Ramsgate, International Air Charter has specialised in private executive charter for the past nine years and currently records a turnover over five million pounds a year.

Asked about the general reaction to the website in the initial weeks of it going live, Courtenay said: "We've already got a few hundred operators registered, and that's without having pushed it in the States yet. The service is unique and its totally free of charge.

"We think it will become very popular. As a broker, we have often had operators sending us faxes or emails, advising us that their aircraft is available away from base.

"With the new system, operators have an exact location to visit and display their information."