The price of a flight to New York is reported in several incompatible ways: fare-search averages of prices shown, official averages of tickets sold on city-pair markets, and average itinerary fares for trips starting at each airport. We assemble all three and keep them apart. On the top US domestic city-pair markets that include New York, the passenger-weighted average one-way fare was USD 271.86 in the first quarter of 2026 and USD 252.01 over 2025, against USD 202.50 in 1996 in current dollars. Origin dominates: California–New York fares averaged USD 458.65 one way, 2.02 times Florida's USD 227.24 and 2.40 times Illinois' USD 191.17, and passenger-weighted fares rose from USD 192.27 on routes under 500 miles to USD 418.55 on routes of 2,000 miles or more. In commercial fare-search data the average round trip was USD 305, ranging from USD 228 in January to USD 366 in July. Backing 2026 statutory charges out of a USD 305 nonstop round trip, USD 49.93 (16.4%) is federal taxes and airport fees, and USD 68.16 (22.3%) on a one-stop itinerary. Trips starting at JFK averaged USD 497.23 in the second quarter of 2026, at Newark USD 495.84 and at LaGuardia USD 404.23. The three airports handled 142.4 million passengers in 2025, above the 139.9 million of 2019, and received 414,548 domestic passenger flights, 73% of them of three hours or less gate to gate. All inputs are public.
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Askew et al. (2026) studied this question.
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