New York → Madrid flights

JFK–Madrid: median $253, but bottom quartile dips to $226

Key takeaways

• Median fare of $253 across 30 daily snapshots gives a solid baseline for budgeting
• Bottom quartile (p25 of $226) shows a meaningful share of fares dip well below median
• Top quartile reaches $275, with an observed high of $293 — the spread of 49% is fairly wide
• Low of $196 confirms real deals surface, though they're not the norm
• With a 49% spread between low and high, timing your search matters more than on tighter routes

30-day price trend

See full numbers and stats on the JFK → MAD price history page.

The full picture

Over the 30-day sample window, JFK–Madrid fares ranged from $196 to $293, a 49% spread that signals real price variability rather than a stable, narrow band. The median of $253 is a reasonable planning number, but the fact that the 25th percentile sits at $226 — nearly $30 below median — suggests that a meaningful chunk of days offer noticeably better pricing than the midpoint implies. If your travel dates are flexible, that gap between p25 and p75 ($226 to $275) is worth tracking rather than booking at the first price you see.

With only a 30-day snapshot window, we can't speak to how prices behave months out from departure — this data reflects a rolling cache of cheapest fares, not a full booking-curve analysis from search to departure. What it does tell us is that on any given day, there's a real chance of landing near the low end ($196–$226) versus the high end (near $293), so checking fares across several days rather than settling on one search session is a reasonable strategy given the spread we observed.

We don't have carrier-level detail strong enough to attribute the swings to a specific airline's pricing behavior, and day-of-week patterns aren't distinguishable in this dataset. The honest takeaway: this is a route with above-average volatility (49% spread is wide relative to many transatlantic routes), so treat $253 as a fair midpoint target, treat anything at or below $226 as a good outcome, and don't expect a single 'best day' to book — the data doesn't support that level of precision.

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