Ferry Flight / Positioning Flight

A ferry flight is a non-revenue flight conducted to reposition an aircraft from one location to another without carrying revenue passengers or cargo. Unlike a deadhead, which involves crew members repositioning on a passenger service, a ferry flight operates the aircraft itself — with only the minimum required flight crew aboard — purely for repositioning, maintenance delivery, or delivery from a manufacturer to an airline.

What Is a Ferry Flight?

Ferry flights arise from the logistical reality that commercial aircraft must sometimes be moved between cities, maintenance bases, storage facilities, or buyers without an accompanying passenger demand. The most common triggers include: delivering a newly manufactured aircraft from Boeing's factory in Everett, Washington or Airbus's assembly line in Toulouse to an airline's home hub; returning an aircraft from a distant maintenance facility (MRO — Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) back to service; repositioning an aircraft from an off-route diversion point back to base; moving an aircraft to a storage facility during capacity reductions; and transferring an aircraft between two airlines as part of a lease return or sale transaction.

How It Works in Practice

A ferry flight is filed with ATC as a regular IFR flight plan but with a "ferry" notation in the remarks field. The crew is typically two pilots — or more if the route distance triggers ETOPS, augmented crew, or minimum equipment requirements. No cabin crew are legally required since there are no passengers, though some operators carry a flight attendant for crew safety or aircraft familiarization purposes. Fueling a ferry flight requires careful planning: because there is no passenger cabin weight to calculate, the aircraft may depart significantly lighter than a revenue service, which changes its performance envelope and optimal fuel load. On very long ferry legs, aircraft may carry ferry fuel tanks — temporary bladder tanks installed in the cargo hold — to extend range beyond the normal fuel capacity. The Concorde, for example, required ferry tank installations to cross the Atlantic before it was certified for supersonic transatlantic service.

Some ferry flights require special airworthiness ferry permits when the aircraft does not fully comply with normal airworthiness standards. An aircraft with a known defect that would ground it for revenue operations may receive a one-time ferry permit to fly it to the maintenance facility capable of repairing the issue, provided the defect does not affect the safety of the specific ferry flight. These permits are issued by the national aviation authority (FAA in the U.S., EASA-member national authorities in Europe) after the operator demonstrates that the flight can be completed safely with the known deficiency.

Why It Matters

Ferry flights represent a meaningful operational and financial cost. The fuel, crew pay, landing fees, and ATC charges for a transatlantic ferry flight can reach $50,000 to $150,000 or more depending on aircraft type. Airlines carefully evaluate whether to ferry an aircraft or arrange passenger services to cover the repositioning need. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when passenger demand collapsed globally, airlines operated thousands of ferry flights to move aircraft to desert storage in Victorville, California, Alice Springs, Australia, or Tarbes, France, incurring the repositioning cost to consolidate their fleets efficiently.

Ferry flights are also the mechanism by which newly delivered aircraft enter service. Every Boeing 787 delivered to Singapore Airlines must be ferried from Everett, Washington to Singapore Changi — a journey of over 13,000 km — typically with a brief stop for fuel in Anchorage or Japan. These delivery ferry flights often carry airline executives, photographers, and acceptance crew members for the formal delivery ceremony.

Key Facts and Figures

• Boeing's delivery center at Everett (for widebodies) and Renton (for 737s) dispatches approximately 400 to 600 delivery ferry flights per year in a normal production cycle.
• The longest ferry flights on record involve aircraft delivered from North American factories to Asian or Australian customers: approximately 13,000 to 15,000 km non-stop with auxiliary fuel tanks.
• FAA Special Flight Permits (ferry permits) under 14 CFR Part 21.197 allow operations with known airworthiness deficiencies for the sole purpose of flying to a maintenance facility.
• During April 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 demand collapse, an estimated 16,000 commercial aircraft — more than half the world's commercial fleet — were in storage, requiring massive ferry flight operations to position them.
• Airbus's A380 delivery flights from Toulouse typically make a stop in the Middle East or South Asia before continuing to Southeast Asian or Australian customers.
• Ferry pilots who specialize in delivering small general aviation aircraft across oceans are a niche professional community, often using portable GPS equipment and self-contained survival gear for solo transatlantic crossings in single-engine aircraft.

Related Concepts

Airworthiness Certificate, Special Flight Permit, Deadhead, MRO, Aircraft Delivery