San Francisco → Tokyo flights

SFO–Tokyo: target $256–$281 and book before fares climb to $344+

Key takeaways

• Median fare is $281, but the middle of the range is not your target — the bottom quartile floor of $256 is the realistic 'good deal' threshold.
• The 67% spread (low $210 / high $351) is unusually wide for a single route, signaling that timing your purchase meaningfully changes what you pay.
• Fares dip as low as $210 — roughly 25% below median — suggesting genuine sale windows exist, though they are not the norm.
• The p75 fare of $344 is 34% above the low, so waiting passively risks landing in the upper tier; monitor and act when prices approach $256 or below.
• Sample size is 17 days — moderately thin, so treat these figures as directional rather than statistically definitive.

30-day price trend

See full numbers and stats on the SFO → NRT price history page.

The full picture

The SFO–Tokyo (NRT) route is showing a median fare of $281 across 17 daily snapshots, but the more useful signal is the interquartile range: 25% of observations came in at or below $256, while 25% reached $344 or higher. That $88 gap between the p25 and p75 marks is substantial — it means the difference between booking at a routine moment versus a favorable one is roughly equivalent to a tank of gas in fare savings, in either direction. The 67% spread between the absolute low ($210) and high ($351) underscores that this route has real price volatility, which is actually good news for patient shoppers.

On the booking horizon, transpacific routes historically soften when carriers release inventory early — typically in the 6-to-10-week window before departure — though that pattern isn't directly visible in this snapshot dataset. What the data does support is setting a price alert at or below $256 (the p25 threshold) and treating anything under $240 as a strong buy signal. Conversely, if you're seeing quotes above $320, you're likely in the upper tier of the observed range and may benefit from waiting a short window, assuming your travel dates have flexibility.

No dominant carrier is identifiable from the current data, so fare comparisons across airlines on this route are worth running manually — SFO–NRT is served by multiple carriers and codeshare arrangements that can produce meaningfully different prices for equivalent itineraries. One honest caveat: with only 17 days of samples, these figures are directionally useful but not statistically robust. A longer data window could shift the median and widen or narrow the spread further. Use these numbers as a calibration point, not a guarantee.

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