Cheap Flights from Los Angeles to Europe

Los Angeles is the seventh cheapest US gateway to Europe on median, at $671. Its cheapest fare is $560. The gap between those two numbers — $111 — is one of the narrowest in our dataset.

That means the usual advice for finding a cheap transatlantic fare mostly does not work from LAX. There is very little bargain tail to hunt, and being flexible about your destination buys you less here than almost anywhere.

What there is instead is the largest carrier spread in the country.

The airline decision is worth more from LA than anywhere else

Every fare below is for the same fixed week in economy, so a difference between two rows is a difference between two airlines and nothing else.

Route	Cheapest carrier	Most expensive	Gap
LAX → Frankfurt	$836 Royal Air Maroc	$2,048 KLM	$1,212
LAX → Zurich	$762 SWISS	$1,962 Air France	$1,200
LAX → Paris	$625 Royal Air Maroc	$1,409 Air Tahiti Nui	$784
LAX → London	$692 Royal Air Maroc	$1,331 British Airways	$639
LAX → Istanbul	$730 Royal Air Maroc	$1,361 Air France	$631
LAX → Lisbon	$621 Royal Air Maroc	$1,237 Delta	$616
LAX → Amsterdam	$752 Royal Air Maroc	$1,366 Delta	$614
LAX → Rome	$620 Royal Air Maroc	$1,000 ITA Airways	$380
LAX → Barcelona	$564 Royal Air Maroc	$1,060 KLM	$496
LAX → Madrid	$753 Air France	$814 American	$61

Look down the second column. Royal Air Maroc was the cheapest carrier on 14 of the 15 LAX routes we priced it on, routing every one through Casablanca — and it wins nothing anywhere else. Of the 39 LAX routes in our grid it takes 14 outright, more than any other airline; SAS is second with nine.

Los Angeles to Barcelona at $564 is the lowest West Coast fare in the dataset, against $915 on British Airways through Heathrow and $898 on SWISS through Zurich the same week. Madrid is the interesting exception: Royal Air Maroc does not sell it, and Air France takes it at $753.

The other thing in that table is what happens when you route the wrong way. Air France sells Los Angeles to Zurich through Paris at $1,962, against SWISS flying it nonstop for $762. KLM sells Los Angeles to Frankfurt through Amsterdam at $2,048 against Royal Air Maroc's $836. Neither is a hub premium. Both are itineraries that make no geographic sense, priced accordingly and sold anyway.

An earlier version of this page led with Lufthansa charging $2,039 to Frankfurt against SAS at $808, and drew from it a rule that the flag-carrier premium grows with distance from Europe. Pricing all five US gateways in one sitting killed both. Lufthansa's LAX–Frankfurt nonstop came back at $846 against Royal Air Maroc's $836 — a $10 premium, the narrowest of any Lufthansa home-hub route we price, against $211 from New York and $519 from Chicago. Distance was never the mechanism. What sets the premium is whether some carrier will route that city pair through its own hub, and Los Angeles turns out to have more of those, not fewer.

If you fly from LAX, the single highest-value thing you can do is price at least four carriers before booking. It is worth more than picking a different week and far more than picking a different city.

Three Mediterranean floors, from the wrong coast

LA is the cheapest US airport in the country for three cities, and all three are counterintuitive.

City	From Los Angeles	Next cheapest US gateway
Santorini	$818	$851 Chicago
Mykonos	$826	$844 New York
Salzburg	$666	$740 Orlando

Every East Coast gateway is physically closer to all three, and LA beats them. These are also the three most expensive destinations in our entire dataset — Mykonos and Santorini carry the highest medians of any European city we price — so the win is real but the fares are still high in absolute terms.

We cannot fully explain it. These are two-stop itineraries where the connecting hub does most of the work, and the transatlantic leg out of LAX happens to price softly on the routings involved. It will be re-tested on the next refresh.

What Europe costs from Los Angeles

Destination	From Los Angeles	Cheapest US gateway for it
Barcelona	$560	Boston $499
Madrid	$560	Orlando $519
Porto	$606	Boston $555
London	$610	Orlando $405
Milan	$616	New York $571
Rome	$616	New York $461
Seville	$616	Orlando $539
Valencia	$616	Orlando $539
Lisbon	$617	Boston $581
Paris	$617	New York $459
Stockholm	$626	Seattle $418
Venice	$638	New York $574

Notice how compressed that column is. Nine of the twelve cities sit between $606 and $638 — a $32 band covering most of Europe. That is what a flat fare structure looks like, and it is why destination flexibility pays so little from LAX.

Compare it with Seattle, where the three cheapest cities sit $105 clear of the fourth, or Washington, where the floor is $263 below the median. Los Angeles simply does not have that shape.

Flat fares, and what to do about it

Gateway	Median rank	Median	Floor rank	Cheapest fare	Spread
New York	1st	$574	5th	$422
Washington DC	5th	$651	1st	$388
Los Angeles	8th	$666	13th	$560
San Francisco	9th	$671	16th	$611
Seattle	7th	$665	4th	$418

LA is 7th on median and 13th on floor. San Francisco is worse on the same measure — 8th and 16th, with a $60 spread, the flattest airport in the dataset.

The honest order of what to spend effort on, from LAX specifically:

1. Carrier. Worth up to $1,231 on a single route. Nothing else on this list comes close.
2. Dates. The seasonal swing is still roughly a doubling, which is the one lever that beats carrier choice.
3. Destination. Worth $111 at most. From an airport like Seattle this would rank second; here it is nearly irrelevant.
4. Airport. Not worth connecting east. New York's $91 median advantage does not survive an extra transcontinental segment.

LAX or SFO?

The two California gateways tie exactly on median at $671, which makes the tiebreakers worth knowing.

Los Angeles has the better floor — $560 against San Francisco's $611 — and holds three national floors where San Francisco holds none. San Francisco is flatter still, with a $60 spread that is the narrowest of any airport in our dataset; there is genuinely nothing to hunt for out of SFO.

Neither difference is large enough to justify travel between them. If you are in the Bay Area, fly from SFO and put your effort into the carrier. If you are in Southern California, the same advice applies with a slightly better floor to aim at.

The airport that actually beats both on the low end is Seattle, and only to Scandinavia — which is a trip decision rather than an airport one.

Why LAX is shaped like this

A flat fare structure with a huge carrier spread is an unusual combination, and both halves have the same cause: distance, and who is willing to absorb it.

Every transatlantic route from Los Angeles is long. The shortest is around ten hours; Frankfurt and Athens are eleven to twelve. That length does two things at once.

It compresses the floor, because there is no cheap way to fly someone eleven hours. Low-cost transatlantic carriers, which are what pull a floor down at Boston or Orlando, largely do not operate the sectors that would help — the economics are harder and the aircraft that can do it profitably are scarce. LA has some low-cost presence but nothing like the competitive layer at an East Coast gateway.

It widens the carrier spread, because a nonstop across eleven hours is a genuinely scarce product, and the airline that owns it prices accordingly. Lufthansa's $2,039 to Frankfurt is not irrational: it is the only nonstop, it is eleven hours shorter than the alternative, and enough people will pay. SAS at $808 through Copenhagen is selling you a connection because a connection is all it has.

That is why the advice inverts here. At Boston you hunt for a cheap fare. At LAX you choose between a cheap connection and an expensive straight line, and the honest question is what four extra hours are worth to you rather than whether a bargain exists.

Premium economy is a real question from LA

We do not yet price premium economy systematically, so this section is guidance rather than data, and flagged as such.

On a six-hour Boston to Dublin sector, the case for paying up is weak. On an eleven-hour LAX to Frankfurt sector in a basic economy seat with no carry-on and no seat assignment, it is a different calculation, and the gap between economy and business from LA is wide enough that premium economy occupies real ground in the middle.

What we can say from the data we do hold: business from Los Angeles carries the largest premiums we have measured anywhere. On the routes where we priced both cabins from other cities, business ran two and a half to five times economy. LAX has the longest sectors and the thinnest competition of any major gateway, and there is no reason to expect it to be gentler.

Pricing premium economy across the same fixed week is on the list. Until it exists, this page will not put a number on it.

What counts as a good price from Los Angeles

Destination	From Los Angeles	Normal	Good	Exceptional
Barcelona	$560	$673	$560	$499
Madrid	$560	$696	$593	$519
Rome	$616	$669	$598	$461
Paris	$617	$690	$617	$459
Salzburg	$666	$802	$766	$666

Normal is the median across all 26 US gateways, Good beats three quarters of the country, and Exceptional is the lowest fare observed anywhere.

Barcelona and Madrid at $560 are comfortably inside "good". Rome and Paris land exactly on the "good" line, which is the typical LA result: fine, never remarkable. Salzburg is the exceptional number, because LA set it.

Full thresholds for all 40 cities are on our deals page.

When to go

• Late October to mid-December — the best combination of low fares and tolerable weather at the European end.
• January to early March — equally cheap or cheaper, with a northern winter waiting.
• The fortnight around Christmas and New Year — a sharp spike, worth avoiding unless the dates are the point.
• Late April to May, and September — the shoulders, and the best value once weather enters the calculation.
• June to August — roughly double. From LAX the sectors are long enough that a summer economy ticket is a genuinely uncomfortable purchase; if the budget stretches, this is the route where premium economy earns its keep.

Method, and its limits

Every fare was collected on August 30, 2026 from Google Flights, priced as a one-week round trip in economy for one adult, taking the cheapest available week in the following six months. The carrier comparison is a separate dataset priced for one fixed week, also in economy.

What this does not measure. Baggage is excluded, and most headline fares are the cheapest bucket — increasingly basic economy with no full-size carry-on. On a twelve-hour sector that restriction bites harder than it does from Boston.

This grid is refreshed monthly, in one sitting, and stamped with its date.

Where to go from here

• The best airlines to Europe is the page to read next if you fly from LAX, because carrier choice is where your money is.
• Compare any two carriers head to head on the routes where both were priced.
• Cheap flights from Seattle is the west coast alternative, and behaves completely differently.
• The cheapest places to fly in Europe ranks all 40 destinations across all 26 US gateways.