The Cheapest Short-Haul Routes From the US and UK in 2026

In a typical week in early 2026, Spirit has flown Fort Lauderdale (FLL) to Nassau (NAS) for around $58 round trip, Frontier has sold Denver (DEN) to Las Vegas (LAS) for $39 each way, and Ryanair has put London Stansted (STN) to Dublin (DUB) on sale for £24 round trip. None of those are mistake fares. They are the everyday floor of the short-haul market — if you know which routes carry the most competition and when to look.

A short-haul route is a flight under roughly three hours' block time — domestic hops in the US, or cross-Channel and intra-European runs from the UK. These are the routes where low-cost carriers fight hardest, where a single competitor entering a market can collapse fares overnight, and where the gap between a smart booking and a lazy one is often the cost of the entire trip.

The US: where domestic fares actually bottom out

Domestic US pricing is brutally asymmetric. The cheapest routes are not the shortest ones — they're the ones where Spirit, Frontier, Breeze, or Avelo overlap with a legacy carrier. Competition, not distance, sets the floor.

The most reliably cheap short-haul corridors in 2026:

• Los Angeles (LAX) to Las Vegas (LAS): $38–$70 round trip on Spirit, Frontier, or Southwest. A 50-minute flight that's cheaper than the parking at the airport.
• New York (LGA/EWR) to Washington (DCA/IAD): $58–$90 round trip when Breeze and the legacies overlap; the shuttle premium evaporates if you avoid peak business slots.
• Dallas (DFW/DAL) to Houston (IAH/HOU): $48–$80 round trip. Two-carrier-town competition keeps this floor low.
• Chicago (ORD/MDW) to Minneapolis (MSP): $70–$110 round trip, cheapest in January and late August.
• Atlanta (ATL) to Orlando (MCO): $58–$95 round trip, with Frontier and Spirit dragging the floor down most of the year.

For weekend escapes, the asymmetry runs in your favour on point-to-point LCC routes that bypass the legacy hubs. Breeze has built a network of mid-size city pairs nobody else flies nonstop — Provo to Phoenix, Charleston to Hartford — and prices them at $39–$79 one-way because there's no competition to match and no hub cost to recover. Avelo does the same out of Burbank and New Haven.

The catch is the fee-after-fare math. A $39 Spirit fare becomes $39 only if you fly with a personal item, skip seat selection, and don't print a boarding pass at the counter. Add a carry-on ($45–$79 each way if bought late) and a checked bag and the "ultra-low-cost" fare can land above the legacy carrier. The discipline that makes short-haul cheap is travelling light — see our guide to carry-on-only travel for the specifics.

The UK: the cheapest weekend-trip fares in Europe

UK short-haul is the most competitive short-haul market on earth. Ryanair, easyJet, and Wizz Air run hundreds of routes out of London, Manchester, and the regional airports, and the floor on a flexible mid-week booking is genuinely low.

Real 2026 weekend-fare ranges, booked a few weeks out and avoiding school half-terms:

• London Stansted (STN) to Dublin (DUB): £24–£45 round trip on Ryanair. A 75-minute hop and the cheapest international flight most Britons will ever take.
• London (LGW/LTN) to Edinburgh (EDI) or Glasgow (GLA): £30–£60 round trip on easyJet or Ryanair, often cheaper and always faster than the LNER train.
• London (STN/LTN) to Amsterdam (AMS): £35–£70 round trip. The classic city-break weekender.
• Manchester (MAN) to Barcelona (BCN) or Málaga (AGP): £40–£85 round trip on Ryanair or Jet2, cheapest in February, March, and November.
• London to Berlin (BER), Prague (PRG), or Kraków (KRK): £40–£80 round trip across the LCCs, with Wizz often undercutting on the Central European routes.

The screenshot stat

The single most decisive number in UK short-haul:

Route	LCC low fare (off-peak)	Same route, October half-term	Premium
London → Málaga (AGP)	£42 rtn	£170–£240 rtn	up to 5×
London → Edinburgh (EDI)	£36 rtn	£120–£180 rtn	up to 4×
Manchester → Amsterdam (AMS)	£48 rtn	£150–£210 rtn	up to 4×

The same seat, the same plane — the only variable is the calendar. UK school holidays (the two-week Easter break, late May half-term, the summer holidays, and the October and February half-terms) are the most expensive weeks of the year on every short-haul route. Move your weekend one week earlier or later and you save the price of the flight itself.

The 2026 angle: London-area airport arbitrage and US LCC shuffle

Two things shape the 2026 short-haul map. In the UK, Luton and Stansted continue to undercut Gatwick and Heathrow by a wide margin on the same destinations — Wizz's Luton base and Ryanair's Stansted base mean a Florence or Faro weekend can cost half what it does from a Heathrow short-haul slot. Always price all five London airports before booking; the train fare into town rarely erases the saving.

In the US, the ultra-low-cost segment is consolidating and re-routing in 2026, which means route availability shifts month to month. Spirit and Frontier have trimmed some city pairs and added others; Breeze and Avelo keep launching new nonstops into underserved mid-size markets. A route that didn't exist in January may be the cheapest option by autumn — and a new entrant on an existing route can halve the fare within days of announcing service. This volatility is exactly why a static "cheapest routes" list goes stale, and why watching specific city pairs beats memorising them.

How to lock the floor

The floor on a short-haul route isn't a fixed number — it's the lowest point of a curve that moves with competition, load factors, and flash sales. Ryanair and easyJet run seat sales with a few hours' notice; Spirit and Frontier drop fares on under-booked flights six to eight weeks out. You can't watch every route by hand. Flyozo monitors your chosen city pairs around the clock and pushes a notification the moment a fare drops below your threshold, so a £24 Dublin weekend or a $39 Vegas hop reaches you while the seats are still there. Set your home airports, name the weekends you want to escape, and let the alerts do the watching.