Los Angeles → New York flights

LAX–JFK fares cluster near $159 — little room to game timing

Key takeaways

• Median fare sits at $159, with the bulk of observed fares (p25–p75) between $139 and $161.
• Low of $107 was an outlier — most snapshots landed much closer to the median than to this floor.
• 50% spread between low and high looks wide, but it's driven by one cheap data point, not a recurring pattern.
• High of $161 is barely above the median, suggesting the top end of pricing is fairly capped in this sample.
• Only 12 daily snapshots were observed — not enough to confidently call out weekday or carrier-specific patterns.

30-day price trend

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

The full picture

The data shows a tight cluster of fares for LAX–JFK, with a median of $159 and a bottom quartile of $139. The headline spread of 50% looks dramatic, but it's almost entirely explained by a single low observation of $107 — the p25 figure of $139 tells the more useful story: most fares you'll actually encounter sit within about $20 of the median, between $139 and $161. In practical terms, this route doesn't show the kind of wild volatility where timing your purchase can save you hundreds.

With only 12 days of snapshots, we can't responsibly map out a full booking curve or say with confidence when in the booking window prices typically soften. What we can say is that the ceiling in this sample ($161) is close to the median ($159), which suggests fares aren't spiking sharply on any particular days captured — the variation is modest apart from that one low outlier. If you see something priced near or below $139, that's solidly in the cheaper quartile of what we've observed and worth booking rather than waiting.

No dominant carrier was identifiable from this data, and we don't have enough observations to responsibly comment on day-of-week effects for departures or purchase timing. The honest takeaway: this is a thin, 12-day sample on a route that normally sees much higher fare volatility than what's shown here, so treat the $107 low as a lucky snapshot rather than a repeatable target, and expect to pay closer to the $139–$161 range in practice.

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