Beat the Seat Sale Race

For the past 3 months, I've been browsing through domestic and international seat sale ads of various local airlines, in hope to get the best pricing for my travel goals this year. Here's an overview on what I found out and how you can save on your airfare, and put those extra bucks into your hotel, tour fees or souvenirs.

Before I start, please note that I am not affiliated with any airline companies or travel agencies, I'm just someone who happen to observe patterns in seat sale promos that may be useful for those who'd like to travel in a budget. My conclusions may go offset in the future as airline sale gimmicks change over time.

Tip no.1 - Airlines send seat sale updates via email, so subscribe to their promo updates. If you really want to get ahead, then be the first one to be informed. Filter and have a separate folder for these so it wont mess with your regular inbox. During big sales, seats are taken already even by the first 2-12 hours of the sale period. Last January, I waited for AirAsia's big sale and for the first hour, I can feel the website crawling already due to heavy traffic.

Domestic flight promos last about 3 days at least. For example, AirPhilExpress right now has their Php 0(zero) Express Easter Sale for selling period April 8-10, 2012 with travel period July 1 to Sept 30, 2012, and Feb 1-28, 2013.

image source: www.airphilexpress.com

That's for all domestic flights within the country. As expected, most of the discounted seats are taken already if you check mid or last day of sale. Don't expect to find seats on the first months of the posted travelling period, especially if you check mid or last day of sale. I just checked for Manila to Boracay (Caticlan) flights for August, and most of the Php1 seats are scattered already.

(to be continued)