Route brief · NYC → CMB
New York → Colombo
$660
−34% vs typical
seasonal median $1,000 · difference $340
Mar 18 '27 – Mar 31 '27 · 13 nights
Etihad1 stop
- Usual monthly lows
- $957–$1,010
- Board rank
- Stronger than 84%
- Route sample
- 5 observed months
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefCMBColomboA working port city that most people leave immediately — for tea country, ruins and the south coast.Best windowDec–MarAirportsBandaranaike (CMB)All routes into ColomboWhen this route gets cheap.
Cached-fare history: across 5 months, Mar is the cheapest for NYC → CMB. Best time to be there: Dec–Mar.
Fares bottom out in March around $660 and peak in December near $1,969 — a $1,309 spread across the 5 months we track. The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes one stop and takes about 17 hours outbound, on a 13-night trip — ticketed under Etihad, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $660 for 14,082 km each way, that works out to about $23 per 1,000 km flown. That is well under the $40 that ultra-long-haul fares on this board typically run. Of the 11 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Colombo, this is the cheapest right now — 28% under the next one, Los Angeles. That puts it in the cheaper half of the 31 routes of similar length we watch out of New York, where the middle fare is $784.
The one day we hold a cached fare for
Tap a date → live search
The median cached fare across this calendar is 4% higher than when tracking began on Aug 8 — $1,084 then versus $1,124 now, across 6 recorded snapshots. This is a calendar-level trend, so an individual deal above can be lower. The lowest single day we have seen here is $574, on Aug 28.
These are the only days we have a cached price for on this route so far — not the only days it flies. The search above covers any date.
Cheapest in Mar · around $660
34% below the $1,000 typical fare
Cheapest round-trip fare found per month · New York → Colombo · cached-price history
Route facts
- Airports
- JFK · Newark (EWR) · LaGuardia (LGA) ↔ Bandaranaike (CMB)
- Flight time
- ~17 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~14,082 km each way
- Typical price
- $1,000 round-trip (seasonal median)
- Airlines on the board
- Etihad
- Itineraries
- Connections on current fares
- Best months to visit
- Dec–Mar
NYC → CMB, answered.
Is $660 a good price for New York to Colombo?
Yes — the seasonal median for this route is around $1,000 round-trip. At $660 you're 34% below that, saving about $340, which we rate great for this route.
What is the cheapest month to fly from New York to Colombo?
Across 5 months of cached-fare history, Mar comes out cheapest on this route. The best months to actually be in Colombo are Dec–Mar — when those overlap, that's your window.
How far in advance should I book NYC → Colombo?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. What we can measure is which month is cheap: across 5 months of cached fares, Mar comes out lowest on this route. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for what does move a fare.
Are there nonstop flights from New York to Colombo?
The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under Etihad. Nonstop options exist on many dates at higher prices — check the live search for your exact dates.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on September 1). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Colombo?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Mar 18 '27 – Mar 31 '27 · 13 nights.
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