She Finally Snapped: The Promo Flight Spreadsheet

Yesterday, some friends and I were poring over promo fares for Cambodia and Australia; today, I found myself reserving another impromptu ticket to Beijing. I’ve been a having a few love-hate relationships lately, and the most recent one is with budget flights.

To be fair, the romance has always been brewing;  it started when I found like-minded friends at work who ate wanderlust for breakfast. I would go as far as saying that budget flights will be known at the greatest contribution to mankind from our generation (yes, even surpassing Facebook and the iPhone. gasp!).

It’s a guilty pleasure of mine to browse online booking sites, looking for the latest travel promos so that I can steal escapades for a song. I must say that the interfaces for sites like Jetstar and Zuji are getting better at letting patrons fetter out the best deal. I’m not sure whether it’s because the mind selectively zones in on what you actually want to see, but I’ve been noticing a lot of promo fares lately. Is October the promo season for flights?

So I did what any (in)sane budget traveler would do: pretend that I have a lot of time to burn and plot all the promo fares in a spreadsheet for comparison. After pointlessly drooling over the discounted fares (Milan! Athens! Barcelona!), I came up with this obra. I entertained myself for a while, finding out which airline actually offers to lowest fares for a certain destination, and window-shopping for the next hotspots for the 2012 long weekends (hanggang window lang…). Hopefully, someone can actually make good use of this and book their next getaway — whether it’s just a weekend breather in Bali, or an extended retreat in Europe.

You can browse the Google Docs version over here; if you want the Excel version, just hit me in the comments below with your email address, and I’ll send it over. Some of the promos actually expire today, so drop all the excuses, invest in your wealth-in-experience and sanity, and browse, browse, browse!

If this tally actually helped you book that much-needed vacation, let me know! I’m actually considering doing this on a regular basis, if it’s found to serve some purpose. If you guys have any requests or suggestions, let me know as well.