Virgin America Marks Fourth Year Anniversary: Thanks Local Flyers at a SF Giants Game - and Announces Multi-Year Marketing Partnership With the Hometown Champs

For Filipinos in the US, take a look at Virgin America's promo fares.  Read on:

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 4, 2011 -- /PRNewswire/ -- This week, Virgin America, the airline that has been reinventing flying since its August 2007 launch, marks its fourth year anniversary with festivities that celebrate the airline's continued job growth, network expansion and innovative service.  To mark birthday number four, San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee has proclaimed the airline's anniversary date of August 8, 2011, "Virgin America Day" in the City of San Francisco.  In order to thank its loyal local flyers, today the airline is offering a hometown fare sale, with San Francisco fares starting from $49,* with taxes, fees and restrictions applying.  In addition, this weekend, the airline will kick off its anniversary week by celebrating with sports fans at "Virgin America Day at AT&T Park," as the San Francisco Giants host the Philadelphia Phillies on Saturday (August 6th).  As a special birthday present to its hometown, Virgin America will offer all attendees at AT&T Park this Saturday an exclusive two-for-one flight voucher ** on the airline that just last month captured Travel + Leisure's World's Best Domestic Airline title for the fourth year in a row.

More from here: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/04/3816692/virgin-america-marks-fourth-year.html

PAL, Cebu Pacific launch fare promos

Take a look at this great article on PAL and 5J's promo fares.  Hurry and book your flights now.

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine Airlines (PAL) has brought back its "Fly-all-you-can" promo for Asia, while rival Cebu Pacific launched a seat sale to all destinations.

PAL fares for flights between local hubs Manila, Cebu and Davao and the key cities in the region are down to $270 for economy class, and $1,070 for business class.

Destinations covered by the promo are Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Macau, Saigon, Shanghai, Singapore and Taipei. Plane tickets are up for grabs starting Friday, July 29, until August 7, for travel from August 15 to November 30.

Cebu Pacific, meanwhile, is offering 500,000 seats at 50% discount to all international and local points from July 30 to August 1 or until seats last. This is for travel from September 1 to December 14.

Cebu Pacific flies to 16 international and 34 domestic destinations.

More from here:http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/07/29/11/pal-cebu-pacific-launch-fare-promos

CEB named world’s 5th most profitable LCC, gives back with P99 all-domestic sale

Check Cebu Pacific's promo celebrating their number 5 ranking as the most profitable carrier in the world.  Read on:

The Philippines’ largest national flag carrier, Cebu Pacific (PSE:CEB) ranked fifth most profitable leading value airline in the world, according to the July 2011 issue of Air Transport World (ATW).

ATW’s World Airline Report special feature cited CEB as 5th in net profit and 8th in operating profit in a list of international low-cost carriers including USA’s Southwest Airlines and Europe’s Ryanair. They based the financial rankings on data for the most recent fiscal year.

A monthly magazine, ATW has been covering global airline and commercial air transport manufacturing for nearly 48 years.

“This is quite an achievement since it shows CEB’s financial management and sustainability as a business. Since 1996, CEB has been offering the lowest fares in all its destinations, and it will continue to do so for the benefit of the traveling public,” said CEB VP for Marketing and Distribution Candice Iyog.

“Because of every Juan’s continued support, we give back to our passengers with an all-domestic P99 seat sale,” she added.

The seat sale is on July 22, 2011 only or until seats last, for travel from October 1 to November 30, 2011.

Passengers can buy P99 seats to Bacolod, Boracay (Caticlan), Busuanga (Coron), Butuan, Calbayog, Cagayan de Oro, Catarman, Cauayan (Isabela), Cebu, Clark, Cotabato, Davao, Dipolog, Dumaguete, General Santos, Iloilo, Kalibo, Legazpi, Laoag, Manila, Naga, Ozamiz, Pagadian, Puerto Princesa, Roxas, San Jose (Mindoro), Siargao, Surigao, Tacloban, Tagbilaran, Tawi-Tawi, Tuguegarao, Virac and Zamboanga.

Passengers with check-in luggage may avail of prepaid baggage allowance, for travel savings as much as 63% on domestic flights. The seat sale fare is exclusive of government tax and fuel surcharge.

“CEB will get to offer its low fares to even more passengers as we take delivery of more Airbus A320 aircraft orders this year. We hope passengers can take advantage of our great value seat sales, convenient travel services and extensive route network,” Iyog said.

For bookings and inquiries, guests can go to www.cebupacificair.com or http://funtours.cebupacificair.com (for Fun Tours packages), or call the reservation hotlines (02) 7020-888 or (032) 230-8888. The latest seat sales and promos can also be found on CEB’s official Twitter and Facebook pages.

CEB currently operates 10 Airbus A319, 15 Airbus A320 and 8 ATR-72 500 aircraft. By the end of 2011, CEB will be operating a fleet of 37 aircraft – with an average age of less than 3.5 years – one of the most modern aircraft fleets in the world. Between 2012 and 2021, Cebu Pacific will take delivery of 23 Airbus A320 and 30 Airbus A321neo aircraft orders, and 2 Airbus A320 aircraft on operating lease agreements.


http://www.zamboangatoday.ph/index.php/news/13-top-stories/5458-ceb-named-worlds-5th-most-profitable-lcc-gives-back-with-p99-all-domestic-sale.html

CEB offers Hong Kong seats for as low as P988!

5J promo!

Also lowers fares to mainland China, Cebu and Tacloban

The Philippines’ largest national flag carrier, Cebu Pacific (CEB) offers a seat sale to mainland China and Hong Kong, our most popular destination, from now until June 13, 2011 or until seats last, for travel from July 1 to September 30, 2011.

CEB offers P988 seats from Clark to Hong Kong, P1,488 seats from Cebu to Hong Kong, and P1,888 seats from Manila to Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shanghai. These are up to 59% lower than CEB’s trademark year-round low fares.

You can also buy P588 seats from Manila to Cebu or Tacloban, as well as from Cebu to Tacloban.

Shop and spend more in Ho ng Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou with CEB’s trademark low fares! Catch the Shaolin Showcase 2011 and International Arts Carnival, which are just some of the Hong Kong events covered by this seat sale’s travel period.

Upon booking online, select your seats in advance and avail of CEB’s web check-in service for a faster check-in process. You can grab your low fares for Independence Day by logging on to www.cebupacificair.com or http://funtours.cebupacificair.com for Fun Tours packages.

You can HALF it all! 50% OFF all Domestic and International destinations!

Cebu Pacific's major sale this weekend.

The Philippines’ largest national flag carrier, Cebu Pacific (CEB) offers you a 50% off seat sale to all our destinations from now until April 10, 2011 or until seats last, for travel from June 1 to August 31, 2011.

Aside from all of CEB’s 33 domestic destinations, the 50% off seat sale includes our 16 international destinations: Bangkok, Beijing, Brunei, Busan, Guangzhou, Ho Chi Minh, Hong Kong, Incheon, Jakarta, Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur, Macau, Osaka, Singapore, Shanghai or Taipei.

This 50% off seat sale is our way of thanking you for continuing to make us number one in the Philippines. We broke several records when it comes to the number of passengers carried in the 1st quarter of 2011, and we will continue to offer more opportunities for every Juan to fly! Hurry, log on to www.cebupacificair.com for your bookings now.

Airfare 101: How to find the best airline deals

Got this interesting article on a few tips on how to find the best deals when flying.  Read on:

It used to be all so simple. Back in the days when the peppy stewardess (that's what they called them back then) would pin little plastic pilot wings on you, airfares changed so infrequently that airlines actually printed them on their schedules. You'd call your favorite travel agent to find the best deal, pack your bags, and jet off. And there were only two kinds of fares: coach and first class.

Hunting down the best deal requires patience and perseverance, but by gaining industry insights and utilizing a broad array of travel resources, flying costs can be kept to a minimum.
Enlarge
By Jewel Samad, AFP/Getty Images
Hunting down the best deal requires patience and perseverance, but by gaining industry insights and utilizing a broad array of travel resources, flying costs can be kept to a minimum.

Now, with airfares changing literally by the second and an alphabet soup of different offers, finding the "best" deal is a challenge. And it hasn't helped that some airlines have removed their fares from your favorite travel websites. But don't give up hope. This step-by-step guide will get you ready for takeoff this summer.
Sign up for free airfare alerts
Why do all the work hunting down a low airfare yourself when you can have someone else do it for free? Many airfare search and listing sites, such as TripAdvisor.com/flights, Travelocity.com, Farecompare.com, Hotwire.com, and Bing.com/travel (and, of course, Airfarewatchdog.com) offer e-mailed airfare alerts when prices go down. This is just a partial list; do a browser search for "airfare alerts" to see what's available. These alert services all work in slightly different ways. Some will let you specify airline, nonstop vs. connecting flights, and other criteria. Yapta.com will let you choose a specific flight to track (although that flight may or may not be the best deal compared to other flights). Others just let you know when a fare on a route you specify has gone down in price, regardless of the airline or flight time.

Get e-mail from your airlines
Next: Sign up for e-mails and frequent flier programs from as many airlines as you can tolerate. Sure, you already get enough e-mail, but you want to fly cheaply, right? Here's why: Airlines are trying to woo customers to book directly with them by offering special deals when you sign up for their newsletters and e-mail lists. One way they do this is by offering "promo code" deals that are redeemable only on their websites. It might be 10% off, or $10 off, or even a half-price sale. They also alert you to special deals that can only be booked on their sites or that are only available to members of their loyalty programs.
Once that's done, let the search begin.
Next step: ask yourself, Are you a flexible flier?
If you answer yes you're in luck, because you'll get the lowest airfares.
Let's say you've been promising your sister you'd visit her sometime this year. But whenever you search for a good airfare, the prices are out of reach. If it doesn't really matter when you go, then you need to search on a website that caters to those with flexible travel dates. Start by clicking over to Travelocity.com, Orbitz.com, Hotwire.com or Cheaptickets.com (all of which are "online travel agencies or OTA's in industry parlance), and check the "flexible dates" button or link. On Travelocity, enter your origin and destination and hit search. You'll see the lowest published fares for travel dates up to 330 days into the future. You'll then need to click on the fare calendars to see when those fares are actually available. Orbitz, Hotwire and Cheaptickets do a flexible date search over any 30-day period you choose. Keep in mind that American Airlines is not currently listed on some sites (notably Expedia, Orbitz, and Hotwire) and of this writing Delta isn't appearing on CheapAir.com or Farecompare.com, although those exclusions are subject to change at any time. After you find a fare, see if Southwest, which only lists its fares on its Southwest.com website, has a better deal (remember that Southwest doesn't charge for the first two checked bags, so you need to factor that in as well as the fare). Southwest, too, has an excellent flexible date tool (look for "Low Fare Calendar" on the site's homepage). And check out AllegiantAir.com to see if Allegiant Airlines flies where you're headed, since it, too, only sells tickets on its own website.
What if you're not flexible in your travel dates? The above-mentioned sites can be helpful in that case as well, but you also might want to try sites such as Kayak.com, Tripadvisor.com/Flights, and Momondo.com. These are "meta search" fare sites, and although they don't offer quite the travel date flexibility as some others do, they often include fares that the airlines sell only on their own websites. None of them include Southwest's fares, however, or fares on the smaller but growing Allegiant Airlines.
DIGITAL TRAVELER: New player shakes up online airfare search
"Meta search" vs. online travel agency (OTA)
So what's the difference? For one thing, online travel agencies have toll-free numbers with agents standing by to help you book or re-book a flight; meta-search sites don't. A meta-search might send you directly to an airline to book your flight, or if the best deal is on a combination of airlines (say, going out on US Airways and coming back on United), they'll send you to an OTA to book. OTA's keep you on their own websites to book travel, and don't always have fares that the airlines are keeping for themselves, but they do show you the widest range of schedules and fares, and sometimes have lower fares than even the meta-search sites do (recent example: American Airlines had business class fares to Europe for peak summer travel at prices lower than economy class for the same dates; Travelocity had these deals, Kayak didn't). Plus, they offer air plus hotel packages that can sometimes save you serious cash.
Airline websites sometimes have the best fares
Next stop: your airline's website. Increasingly, airlines aren't sharing their very best fares with third-party sites such as Orbitz and Kayak. Case in point: recent fares to London from the West Coast for $420 round-trip including tax that were only available on Spanish airline Iberia's website (similar fares were twice that elsewhere). So once you've found a fare, definitely check airline sites directly rather than assuming your favorite third-party site will have all the best deals.
Watch out for promo codes
See those little promo code boxes on your favorite airline's website? What's that all about? From time to time, you'll receive promo codes in your e-mail because you signed up for e-mail from your favorite airlines and online travel agencies. These codes can only be redeemed if you book directly on the airlines' websites, another way they try to build consumer loyalty and cut out the middleman.
When to use your miles
After you've found what you think is a good airfare, ask yourself if it's worth spending some frequent flier miles instead. There are smart ways to spend your miles and less smart ones. Rather than cashing in 25,000 or even 50,000 miles for a domestic economy class ticket that might have cost you $250 or $300, why not splurge for a trip to Europe (50,000 miles on some airlines) that might cost two or three times more; or upgrade your $400 economy class seat to a $2,800 business class fare for 30,000 miles on domestic routes? A general rule: if the economy class fare is $400 or more, spending 25,000 miles is a good deal. Less than that, you might be better offering paying cash and saving your miles.
DEALS: How to choose the 'best' frequent flier program
Check Southwest Airlines separately
If Southwest flies where you're going, you'll have to surf over to Southwest.com to see their fares. Another smaller, but growing, carrier that sells only directly to consumers is Allegiant Airlines (allegiantair.com).
Getting the best last-minute airfares
You'll often get the best fares if you book at least 7 to 21 days ahead of departure. But what if you don't have that luxury? Other than the airlines' last-minute weekend fares, which you can find on their sites, your best bet is Priceline.com's "Name your own price" feature or Hotwire.com. Also take a look at Lastminute.com which packages last minute airfares with hotel and rental car deals. Amazingly, the cost of these packages is often less than what you'd pay for airfare alone.
When to use a real live travel agent
There is another way to find a low airfare, and it's one your mother probably used. Pick up the phone and call a local travel agent, the kind with a real storefront. As good as do-it-yourself online sources can be, your friendly neighborhood travel agent may have some tricks up her sleeve to save you money. Let's say, for example, that you get an airfare alert that fares from Houston to Honolulu are $800 round-trip. But who knew that the same trip, same dates from Dallas is $300. Or that you can fly from Houston to Dallas for $100 and connect onward? Travel agents also sell "consolidator" airfares, which are heavily discounted deals (mostly on international flights). These fares come with more restrictions, but can save you money. And they can also find you amazing package deals. "Bricks and mortar" travel agents often charge for their services, but the savings can be tremendous.
Getting a refund when the fare drops after you buy
Several domestic U.S. airlines will give you a full refund, in the form of a voucher good for future travel, if the airfare drops between the time you buy and time you fly—if and only if you fly on the same itinerary. Those airlines are Alaska, Jetblue and Southwest. Some other airlines issue vouchers, but deduct a ticket re-issue fee (up to $150 on domestic fares, or $250 or more on international ones). A good place to track price drops: Yapta.com, which works with some but not all airlines (notably missing: Southwest).
Watch out for fees
Once you've found your fare, your job isn't quite done. A low fare on one airline could turn out to be not so low once fees are added on. Airlines are making most of their profits these days not from selling you airfares but with all those fees for baggage, premium seats, and other perks. The fee for an "overweight, over-sized" checked bag to some international destinations on Delta Air Lines can cost (gulp!) $700 round-trip. One airfare website that tries to forewarn passengers about fees when they search is TripAdvisor.com/flights. Do a web search for "airline baggage fee chart" or "airline fees" to be forewarned of what you might pay. And don't trust airport baggage scales. Weigh your bags at home before leaving for the airport, and bring a portable digital electronic bag scale to make sure you're not being overcharged. Southwest is currently the only airline that doesn't charge for the first and second checked bags (within weight and size limits), and also doesn't charge a fee if you wish to change your travel dates.
AIRLINE FEES: Know before you go what aspects will cost you
Best days to travel
Although a low airfare can pop up at any minute of the week, one thing's for certain: it's cheaper to fly on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Saturday is also a low-fare day. If traveling internationally, Monday to Wednesday is often the sweet spot.
Is there a "magic" hour or day to buy?
It's true that the airlines' weekend deals come out Monday to Wednesday, and some airlines announce their sales early in the week, but if you limit yourself to searching just on those days, you'll miss out. A good fare can pop up literally any moment of the week. And if you search one minute or one day and the fare is way too high, don't despair. Come back an hour or two or a day or two later and search again. Not only do airfares change with the wind, but the number of seats offered at the lowest fares changes as well, based on supply and demand.
Airfare predictions
Speaking of "when to buy," Bing.com/travel purports to offer accurate airfare predictions, indicating whether the site thinks a fare will go up or down, and it's certainly worth a try, but it's not always accurate. To see if an airfare is currently on the high or low side, do a web search for "historic airfares" to see airfare trends over time on a particular route. Two useful sites: Farereport.com and Kayak.com/trends

More from here: http://travel.usatoday.com/experts/hobica/story/2011/03/Airfare-101-How-to-find-the-best-airline-deals/45148514/1

Juan to shop? Enjoy our Sale for as low as P499 to your favorite shopping destinations!

New promo from Cebu Pacific!  Read on:

Juan to shop? Enjoy our sale to your favorite shopping destinations because the Philippines’ largest national flag carrier, Cebu Pacific (CEB) is holding a Hong Kong and Bangkok seat sale starting now until March 5, 2011 or until seats last, for travel from May 1 to June 30, 2011.

Shop 'til you drop because our flights from Manila, Cebu or Clark to Hong Kong are selling for only P1,499 and as low as P1,999 ‘Go Lite’ from Manila or Clark to Bangkok.

CEB flies to Hong Kong five times daily from Manila, and daily from Cebu and Clark. We also fly to Bangkok ten times weekly from Manila, and twice weekly from Clark.

Our lowest Fun Tours packages start at P4,075 for Hong Kong, and P959 for Bangkok, inclusive of 3 days- 2 nights hotel accommodations. Log on to http://funtours.cebupacificair.com for your bookings to experience this hot deal! 

Shop some more because P499 ‘Go Lite’ seats are available from Cebu to Davao, and Davao to Cagayan de Oro. While P699 ‘Go Lite’ seats are also up for grabs from Cebu to Dipolog or Zamboanga, and from Davao to Iloilo or Zamboanga.

Guests traveling from Manila to Davao, Dipolog or Zamboanga can also avail of P999 ‘Go Lite’ fares.

The cities of Hong Kong and Bangkok are renowned for their great value bargains and shopping options, so you can spend less on your airfare with our seat sale, and spend more on your destinations! Book your seats now atwww.cebupacificair.com!