Los Angeles → San Diego flights

LAX–SAN fares cluster near $50 — don't chase the $203 outlier

Key takeaways

• Median fare is $50, and the bottom quartile (p25) is also $50 — this route has a strong price floor.
• 75% of fares fall at or below $57, meaning typical pricing is tightly bunched near the low end.
• The high of $203 is a clear outlier relative to the rest of the data, likely a last-minute or peak-demand snapshot.
• A 306% spread looks dramatic, but it's driven by a single high point, not a volatile baseline.
• With only 12 days sampled, treat this as a directional read rather than a definitive pattern.

30-day price trend

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

The full picture

The data shows a route that's normally cheap and stable, with one dramatic exception. The median fare of $50 matches the p25 value, which tells us a large share of the sampled days priced at or near the floor. The p75 of $57 confirms that even the upper-middle range stays close to that baseline. This is a short, high-frequency corridor (LAX to San Diego), and the pricing behavior reflects that — low-cost, low-friction fares most of the time.

The $203 high is what inflates the 306% spread figure, but it should be read as an isolated spike rather than evidence of routine volatility. In a 12-day sample, a single snapshot capturing a sold-out-level fare, a schedule irregularity, or a last-minute search can swing the range dramatically without changing the underlying pattern for the other 11 days. Based on the clustering of data around $50–$57, travelers booking within a normal planning window should expect fares in that band most of the time, with the occasional risk of hitting a priced-up day.

We don't have enough snapshots here to responsibly comment on day-of-week effects or carrier-specific pricing behavior — the sample is too thin (12 days) and no dominant carrier was identifiable in the data. The honest takeaway: budget for something in the $50–$57 range, treat anything near $200 as atypical, and don't read too much into the spread percentage on its own, since it's being driven by one high data point rather than a consistently wide pricing range.

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