$12,000 Buffalo–New York Fares Making Headlines—I’m Finding Nonstops For $337 Roundtrip

A $12,203 airfare between Buffalo and New York about 300 miles each way – is going viral as evidence of how expensive it’s gotten to fly home for the holidays. The TikTok video that started it off though shows a roundtrip price (not one-way) and connecting both directions in Florida (not non-stop). Meanwhile, nonstops on that route seem to start at $337 roundtrip. Kristen Mirand says she was trying to get home to Buffalo and received a notification for a $200 flight from New York. Then she looked at returning, and found five-figure prices with connections in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. She joked that she’d start walking. The New York Post ran with “Flight from Buffalo to NYC reportedly reached $12K — as holiday airfare hits an all-time high” and suggests higher fuel costs and holiday demand are involved here. ZeroHedge describes a “roughly 90 minute flight,” and launches into airlines keeping fares high after fuel prices fall. It ends with the prospect of airlines “laughing all the way to the bank.” Look at the flights actually displayed in the video: $11,400 roundtrip, returning through Orlando. These are 7 and 9 hour trips from Buffalo to JFK. $12,203 roundtrip, returning through Fort Lauderdale. These are 7 and 8.5 hour trips. Every price is labeled round trip. you’re seeing the cost of the whole ticket when you select a return. This wasn’t a $12,000 nonstop and none of these itineraries gets you there in 90 minutes. I’m seeing nonstop roundtrips around $337 on Delta Air Lines, JetBlue, United Airlines and American Airlines, checking across the New York airports. Even if you want to connect in Florida, Frontier Airlines can be as low as $210 roundtrip. She doesn’t show her dates, but at those prices be flexible! My guess is that the pricing is breaking somewhere as the system puts together this unnatural itinerary. A fare between Buffalo and New York comes with rules about how you can travel and Florida connections aren’t usually included in the routing rules. A search can wind up combining separate fares for different pieces of the trip instead of using the simple fare between the two cities. Bad fare combining or an error putting together the outbound and return can cause weird outcomes. While the last seats on a flight can be expensive, “last seat available” doesn’t seem like the explanation for a $12,000 Buffalo–New York price. Airfares are up. Hopper’s says Thanksgiving domestic roundtrips average $402, up 31%, and Christmas $452, up 23%. With millions of fare quotes being generated, even a tiny error rate is going to produce outlier results. Mistake fares can be fares that are too high, not just too low. Faced with a fare like this, I’d: Search for nonstops on the date I actually want. Start with the trip I’d choose to take before considering a seven-hour detour. Check JFK, LaGuardia and Newark. Restricting the search to one airport leaves out alternatives that may work just as well. Search the airline websites directly. See whether the airline produces the same price, rather than treating one Google Flights result as the answer. Start a fresh search and compare one-ways with the roundtrip. Check the dates, cabin, passenger count and currency. Separate searches can get you away from whatever combination generated the nonsense price. For this route I’d also price Amtrak’s Empire Service between Buffalo and New York. Those Florida connections already consume most of the day before you add getting to the airport, security and the trip into Manhattan. Topics on this page