Iowa City Municipal Airport Tops Iowa in Private Jet Empty-Leg Listings, SkyAccess Data Shows

Iowa City Municipal Airport (KIOW) recorded more private jet empty-leg flight listings than any other airport in Iowa over the past year, surpassing larger commercial airports including Des Moines International, according to marketplace data released by SkyAccess, an online private jet booking platform. The data, pulled on August 27, 2026, showed Iowa ranked 30th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia for empty-leg activity, with 5,176 unique listings touching an Iowa airport as an origin or destination over the preceding 12 months.

Empty legs are repositioning flights that private jet operators list when an aircraft must fly without paying passengers — typically after dropping off one charter group and before picking up another. Nationally, 381,278 unique empty-leg listings touched a U.S. airport over the same period. Florida led all states with 134,360 listings, more than the combined total of the 31 lowest-ranked states and the District of Columbia. California ranked second with 88,909 listings, followed by Texas with 63,679, New Jersey with 38,276, and New York with 31,051.

SkyAccess noted that in several states, including Iowa, the busiest airport for empty-leg traffic is not the state's primary commercial hub. Similar patterns were observed in Wisconsin, where Appleton International Airport led rather than Milwaukee Mitchell, and in Mississippi, where University-Oxford Airport — owned by the University of Mississippi — topped that state's list. SkyAccess cautioned that the figures reflect listings published on its own platform rather than a full accounting of all private jet traffic nationwide, that marketplace coverage varies by region and grew over the period studied, and that no year-over-year conclusions should be drawn from the data.

The Iowa, Wisconsin and Mississippi cases point to the same underlying dynamic: empty-leg volume tracks where charter operators happen to reposition aircraft, which depends on where owners base jets, where maintenance and FBO services sit, and where demand clusters for outbound trips — not on how large or busy an airport's scheduled-airline terminal is. A general-aviation field like Iowa City Municipal Airport can outrank a state's primary commercial hub simply because it sees more of that operational traffic.

For brokers and buyers, this means state-level or airport-level empty-leg rankings describe listing activity on one marketplace rather than a complete picture of charter supply in a region. SkyAccess itself flagged that its coverage grew and varied by region over the 12 months measured, which limits comparisons across states of very different sizes, such as Florida's 134,360 listings against Iowa's 5,176.

What happens to these rankings as marketplace coverage expands further, and whether smaller-airport leaders like Iowa City, Appleton and University-Oxford hold their positions once more operators and regions are represented, remains to be seen in future data pulls.