The two numbers everyone leaves off a fare
Fare tables are everywhere. What they almost never tell you is how old the number is and what the nonstop would have cost instead — and those two facts decide whether the fare is useful.
This page prices ten US metros against Guatemala City (GUA) and carries both. It is the fare layer; our flights guide is the planning layer, and the direct flights tracker is the route layer. They do different jobs and do not repeat each other.
Why the fare age is on the table
The source is the Aviasales fare cache, read through the Travelpayouts Data Access API. Travelpayouts describes what that is, in its own documentation, without hedging:
“Attention, the data is transferred from the cache, so it is recommended to use them to generate static pages.”
“Data is transferred from the cache based on the user’s search history from Aviasales websites. The data is stored for 7 days for all types of queries.”
“It is not recommended to use expired prices (the approximate expiration date is given in the value of the
expires_atparameter).”
So a fare here is not a quote. It is the cheapest fare a real person found, on a specific day, on this route. That is genuinely useful — it is a floor that someone actually achieved — but it decays. A fare tagged 6.8 days old is at the far edge of a seven-day cache; a fare tagged 0.2 days old was found this morning.
The table colours the age for exactly that reason. Green under two days, amber to five, red beyond.
What the nonstop premium is really telling you
The premium column is the cached nonstop fare minus the cheapest cached fare. Its size and even the available comparisons can change on each refresh.
- Los Angeles: check whether the cheapest fare is already nonstop.
- Miami and Dallas: compare the nonstop premium with the base fare and travel dates.
- Houston and Washington: weigh the current premium against the connection time.
- Chicago: check the current row rather than carrying forward a previous pull’s premium.
Decision rule: compare the actual itinerary, total fare and connection requirements before paying a premium. The table supplies the cached prices; it does not establish a universally better itinerary.
One hard limit: a blank nonstop cell means the cache had no nonstop fare, not that no nonstop route exists. The cache reflects what people searched. For the verified route map — which airline, how often, on what aircraft, what just started and what just stopped — go to direct flights to Guatemala. This page never infers a route from a fare.
The month window, and why it is not a season
The month endpoint returns a forward window of cached searches, not a seasonal average. The number of months varies by city and refresh.
Aviasales cache snapshot, retrieved 23 October 2026 at 18:09:55.886323 UTC. These platform-reported figures are historical observations, not current airline offers. For the newer feed, use the table above.
| From | Cheapest month in cache | Dearest month in cache | Spread (USD) | Months in cache |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 2027-01, USD 265 | 2026-10, USD 584 | 319 | 6 |
| Miami | 2027-01, USD 250 | 2026-12, USD 579 | 329 | 3 |
| New York | 2026-11, USD 520 | 2026-12, USD 616 | 96 | 4 |
| Houston | 2026-12, USD 629 | 2026-12, USD 629 | 0 | 1 |
| Chicago | 2026-11, USD 382 | 2026-11, USD 382 | 0 | 1 |
| Atlanta | Not returned | Not returned | Not returned | Not returned |
| Dallas/Fort Worth | 2026-12, USD 554 | 2026-12, USD 554 | 0 | 1 |
| San Francisco | 2026-12, USD 475 | 2026-11, USD 703 | 228 | 2 |
| Washington Dulles | 2027-02, USD 605 | 2026-12, USD 1093 | 488 | 2 |
| Las Vegas | Not returned | Not returned | Not returned | Not returned |
A missing cell means that this pull returned no month-window value for the city. One month supplies no seasonal comparison. Compare only the observations actually available.
Flying from a neighbouring city
Compare the departure cities in the current table; their ranking and fare gap change with the cache.
That is a real arbitrage and it is also a trap. Positioning yourself to a cheaper departure city means two separate tickets, which means:
- no protection if the first leg is delayed and you miss the Guatemala flight;
- bags almost certainly re-checked, and a second bag fee on a low-cost carrier;
- the cost and time of the positioning flight itself, which the fare difference has to cover before it is a saving.
It works best when the positioning leg is short, cheap, the day before, and you were going to sleep somewhere anyway. It works worst as a same-day connection.
How to use this page in the week you actually book
- Find your city’s row and read the age badge first. A green badge means the number is close to current. A red badge means the cache is telling you what was available last week.
- Look at the premium column before the fare column. Compare the premium with the actual connection time, travel dates and entry requirements before choosing.
- Check the month window, and note how many months it holds. Two months is a comparison, not a trend.
- Confirm at the airline. Every figure here is a cached floor. The booking links go to a live Aviasales search for the same city pair and dates so you can see what is actually on sale right now.
- Budget the bag separately. This page publishes no baggage fees because we did not verify any on 20 September 2026 — and a checked bag can materially change the total fare.
Once you land, the ground costs are on our flights guide — airport transfers, the Uber-versus-taxi arithmetic at La Aurora, and the domestic hop to Flores for Tikal. If you are travelling to support family rather than to sightsee, compare transfer rates before you go on our remittances hub, and current exchange rates will tell you what your dollars are worth on arrival.
Booking links on this page are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. No fare on this page is anything other than what the source feed returned.