Strategy #1: Start your search at Kayak.com
We find that meta-search site Kayak is the all-time best place for scoring the cheapest plane tickets. Our biggest beef with Kayak’s competitors is that, when you click to book a fare, you’re typically directed to a new page. Sometimes it’s only then that you find out your actual departure time. Or worse, you’re forced to plug in your dates and departure cities all over again, only to discover more-expensive fares.Kayak stands apart. Once you’ve found a good flight, click on the price and you’ll be sent directly to the airline’s website, where the exact price for the exact flight you selected unfailingly appears.

Strategy #2: Use fare-history charts to decide if you should delay your ticket purchase
It’s the classic dilemma: Should you buy the best fare you see today or wait because the price might go down? Here’s how to come up with an educated guess. Use Kayak to fetch fares for your itinerary and then click on “Show chart of fare history,” which is a link near the top left-hand corner of the search results. If the chart says that the average fare for your route is much higher than the fare you’re seeing today, then you should probably book the ticket because it’s cheap relative to historic prices.

Strategy #3: Monitor fares and be ready to purchase when the price drops
Plug in your dates and routes, as well as a price threshold, at a fare-tracking service, such as Yapta or Hotwire’s TripWatcher. Each site will ask you to join (free), and then will do several price searches per day. You’ll receive an e-mail alert as soon as the flight drops to your specified price. To name your “trigger” price, look at Kayak’s fare-history chart to see the lowest fare recorded for this route, and use an amount close to that as your baseline.Yapta is the industry leader for tracking fares—even Google incorporates Yapta’s data in its search results. Hotwire’s TripWatcher is also excellent, allowing you to program automatic searches of your chosen route over a 60-day window (which is a nice perk and increases the chances you’ll find a bargain fare as long as you can be flexible in your travel dates). There is a catch, though: While both sites cover popular routes, neither covers the entire world.

Strategy #4: Run a flexible-date search
You may save hundreds of dollars by moving your departure or arrival dates by a day or two, either earlier or later. To see how much you might save, we recommend you take Kayak’s flexible-date search tool for a spin—it covers the broadest range of routes and airports of the competing tools we tested.  Expedia’s flexible search came up with only the most popular routes, so your route may not qualify. Orbitz’s flexible-date calendar gave a nice overview of fares on various days, but departure times were not initially shown. Travelocity provided a few different ways to search flexibly—either within a few days of a selected date, or over selected months—but like Orbitz it failed to show dates and departure times right away. Finally, relative newcomer Trax.com’s flexible search tool lacked a “search nearby airports” feature, which meant it gave you fares from major airports, but missed cheaper fares departing nearby. In short, Kayak is your best bet for a flexible-date search.

Strategy #5: Book two tickets instead of one
You may save hundreds of dollars if you split your international journey into different legs and buy separate tickets for each leg. For example, rather than buy a single ticket for direct flights between Chicago and Barcelona for $1,000, you may be able to buy two tickets—one for a round-trip ticket between Chicago and New York City for $200 and another for a round-trip ticket between New York City and Barcelona for $600—and save about $200.The quickest way to figure out if you can save by booking two tickets is to figure out if there is a hub airport that funnels most American travelers to your overseas destination. Then, look into reserving separate tickets to and from that hub.For instance, Miami is the hub for flights to most destinations in South America and the Caribbean, meaning that a majority of Americans flying southward internationally pass through Miami’s airport instead of, say, either Houston or Atlanta. Another hub airport is Los Angeles’ LAX, which is the main funnel for people heading to Australia, the South Pacific, and Asia. New York City’s airports are common layover spots for most of the planes crossing the Atlantic to Europe and points beyond.
We recently tested this approach for a round-trip between Houston and Sydney. Our initial searches on a few travel websites didn’t turn up any nonstop flights between the two cities, but we did find multi-stop tickets. Delta’s best fare between Houston and Sydney in November was $1,012, with a stop in Los Angeles. That caught our eye. If there’s a large number of flights to Australia passing through L.A., then the City of Angels might offer bargain direct flights to Down Under—because the greater volume of flights often prompts a greater number of fare sales. So we checked out fares between L.A. and Sydney. It turns out they started at $652.Next, we did a quick search for round-trip airfares on flights between Houston and Los Angeles. We found flights for $252, bringing our two-flight total to $904—for a savings of 11 percent over Delta’s flight for $1,012.If you decide to book two tickets on two different airlines, be sure to allow extra time to make your connections, and consider buying good travel insurance to make sure you’re covered in the event of a problem. You can save money on insurance policies by buying them directly from an insurer, such as industry giant TravelGuard (travelguard.com), rather than through a middleman, who will charge a marked-up price.

Strategy #6: Shift your trip to another month
When all else fails and you just can’t get the fare you want, think about off-season travel. In a guidebook, look up your destination’s high (or peak) season, low season, and in-between (or “shoulder”) season. Then travel at a time when your destination is less crowded—and travel costs are correspondingly lower. But don’t get rained on: before you opt for a cheaper season, you’ll want to know about the average weather, so search your guidebook (or a site like weather.com) for monthly trends.

Kayak
Kayak is a travel search aggregator, scouring over 140 sites to bring you the cheapest fares it can find. The results are nicely sorted by price, and once the search is complete, you can tweak and filter the results to find the perfect ticket for your needs. Kayak supports email alerts, can search nearby airports, and the Buzz feature is great if you’re looking to take a spur-of-the-minute vacation on the cheap. Like most travel sites, Kayak also covers hotels, cruises, and rental cars.

Yapta
Yapta—aka Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant—is an airline search engine with an emphasis on tracking airline prices before and after you purchase your tickets. Before your purchase, Yapta will track a flight and alert you when it falls below your desired price (a feature available on most of the sites featured here). After your purchase, Yapta will continue tracking the ticket price. If it drops, the site will send an alert if you’re eligible for a refund or travel credit. If you’re a big Yapta fan, you can even integrate it in your browser with the previously mentioned Yapta Firefox extension or Internet Explorer plug-in.

Live Search Farecast
Live Search Farecast is another airline ticket search aggregator similar to Kayak. Farecast sets itself apart by offering price predictions that suggest whether now is the right time to buy your ticket—or whether you should wait. It does this by tracking and analyzing fare histories. Earlier this year, Farecast was purchased by Microsoft, who slapped the Live Search moniker on the front end.

Priceline
Priceline has long been a favorite of bargain hunters and William Shatner fans alike. Priceline made its name with its Name Your Own Price system, and while the Name Your Own Price option is still available, it’s been significantly de-emphasized on the site. If you’re looking to really low and you don’t mind bidding blindly (when you name your price, you don’t get to choose departure/arrival times or number of stops, for example), NYOP is a good way to go. Otherwise, Priceline’s default search engine still has a lot to offer.

Sidestep
Sidestep is yet another search aggregator that you may find oddly familiar if you’re a Kayak user. That’s because Sidestep was purchased by Kayak a year ago this December. In fact, from what I can tell, SideStep’s search results are the same as what you can get from Kayak—it even sports the same Buzz feature—so it’s really just a matter of choosing which one you like the look and feel of more.

If your planning to have a vacation for at least a cheap way…
Visit now these sites…

CEB is offering a P599 one-way ‘Go Lite’ fare for its Manila-Kota Kinabalu and Manila-Taipei services. This is also extended to services from Clark to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. On the other hand, CEB is also offering
a one-way P1,099 ‘Go Lite’ fare for its Manila-Hong Kong, and Manila-Macau services. One-way ‘Go Lite’ fares for flights from Manila to Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, and Singapore are sold at P1,599. Moreover, one-way ‘Go Lite’ fares for CEB services from Manila to Shanghai, Jakarta, Guangzhou; Cebu-Hong Kong, and Cebu-Singapore are sold at P2,299. The P2,799 one-way ‘Go Lite’ fare is available for flights to Kuala Lumpur, Incheon and Busan (Korea).

They are also offering a one-way promo fare to Osaka, Japan at P2,999. Meanwhile, for domestic flights, CEB offers a P249 one-way ‘Go Lite’ fare for flights from Manila to Busuanga, Cebu, Iloilo, Laoag, Legaspi, Naga, and San Jose. One-way ‘Go Lite’ fares for Manila-Bacolod, Manila-Dumaguete, and other Visayas destinations at P449. One-way ‘Go Lite’ fares from Manila to Mindanao destinations are sold at P1,349 except for Manila to Davao priced at P1,149.

Candice Iyog, CEB VP for marketing and distribution said that they want to support the growth of the tourism industry to help the country keep up with these challenging economic times that is why they are offering this seat sale believing that this will stimulate domestic and international travel during these traditionally lean months.
Promo fares for other domestic routes are available at www.cebupacificair.com or through CEB reservations at 70-20-888 (Manila) / 230-8888 (Cebu).

‘Go Lite’ fares are for passengers traveling with no check-in baggage. Passengers with check-in bags just have to add P200 to the fare.

Travel must be completed by 15 December 2009. See table below for the one way fares in PHP.
SECTOR FARE BASIS BCC ALL-IN ONE WAY FARE (PHP)
MANILA – CEBU or VV WXX W 488
MANILA – ILOILO or VV WXX W 488
MANILA – LAOAG or VV WXX W 488
MANILA – LEGASPI or VV WXX W 488
MANILA – BACOLOD or VV WXX W 788
MANILA – DUMAGUETE or VV WXX W 788
MANILA – KALIBO or VV WXX W 788
MANILA – PUERTO PRINCESA or VV WXX W 788
MANILA – ROXAS or VV WXX W 788
MANILA – TACLOBAN or VV WXX W 788
MANILA – TAGBILARAN or VV WXX W 788
MANILA – BUTUAN or VV WXX W 1888
MANILA – CAGAYAN DE ORO or VV WXX W 1888
MANILA – COTABATO or VV WXX W 1888
MANILA – DAVAO or VV WXX W 1888
MANILA – DIPLOG or VV WXX W 1888
MANILA – GENERAL SANTOS or VV WXX W 1888
MANILA – ZAMBOANGA or VV WXX W 1888

Prices above are inclusive of insurance and fuel surcharges and VAT. Exclusive of Airport Security Fee and other fees that will be collected at the airport.

Here are the conditions of the said promo:

1.    APPLICATION
*            Valid for one way and combinable for roundtrip travel on economy class.
*            Restricted for sales and ticketing in the Philippines.

2.      RESERVATION/PAYMENT and TICKETING
*            Open-dated tickets and go-show not allowed
*            Non-refundable but upgradeable to a higher fare type. Re-issuance fee waived.
*            Downgrade/re-routing allowed. Re-issuance fee must be collected.
*            Re-issuance is allowed at PHP600 per ticket
*            No-show surcharge is PHP600 per sector

*            Rebooking is allowed at PHP600 per sector
3.      TRAVEL VALIDITY
*            Valid for travel from 01 June to 15 December 2009.
4.      OTHER DISCOUNTS
*            No other discounts apply except for Senior Citizen and Infant without seat.
5.     NO MILEAGE ACCRUAL
What are you waiting for? Book your flights now and experience the service of one of the most respected airlines around the world!

Cebu Pacific is always finding ways to encourage the customers to travel around Asia and within the Philippines despite the tough economic situation.

Cebu Pacific (CEB), has removed the surcharges on all international fares starting February 18, 2009. The move will reduce year-round fares by as much as 17 percent. Cebu Pacific passengers will only have to pay for the fare and government taxes. Fuel and insurance surcharge used to range from USD40 to USD 75 per way. While the new fare for CEB’s Manila-Osaka service is applicable beginning March 1 as per Japan Civil Aviation Board approval.

To mark this milestone, Cebu Pacific will offer a system-wide seat sale with more than one million seats available. The promotion will run from February 18 to 24, 2009 or until the allotted seats are sold out. Travel period is from May 1 to December 31, 2009. The promo fares are non-refundable.

A promo fare of P1,999 one way applies on the following services:

* Manila to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh, Kaohsiung, Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur, Macau, Singapore, and Taipei;
* Clark to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore and
* Cebu to Hong Kong.

Cebu Pacific’s Manila-Guangzhou and Cebu-Singapore services are sold at a sale fare of P2,999 while its Jakarta and Shanghai flights are sold at P3,999.

The seat sale is also offered for all of Cebu Pacific’s domestic sectors as well, with fares starting from P388 all-in. For more details, passengers may log on to www.cebupacificair.com .

“We are always looking for ways to make flying more affordable. In these challenging times, we hope the removal of the surcharges could somehow make a difference in supporting the growth of tourism, trade and local travel. Cheaper fares could also help our fellow Filipinos, especially the OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers), save a little bit more of their hard-earned money for their families,” Cebu Pacific president and CEO Lance Y. Gokongwei said.

Gokongwei also said that the budget airline expects to take delivery of three more aircraft this year, three ATR 72-500, as part of its on-going fleet expansion.