Does anyone else have experience with summer super savers?

I'm planning on going to CEB for summer vacation. It's also the peak vacation week for Koreans (July 27-August 4).

Last year, when I went to Vietnam, they had a Super Saver in late May...for the same July travel dates.

What's the probability that they will do it again this year? I'd guess pretty likely, right?

Super Saver fares are K class, right? As of today, ICN-CEB is only showing M and higher (922,000 KRW). E is sold out. ICN-MNL, however, has E class at 722,000 KRW all-in (the CEB E class that was up a few days ago was this price, too)

.....and we could catch a cheap Filipino airline for like 30 USD RT all in MNL-CEB.

Thoughts? Buy MNL or cross my fingers and wait for a CEB saver? At best, I imagine I could get Cebu for 650,000-700,000 KRW all in...but I hate waiting for summer sales.

I don't know anything specific about these super saver fares, but it seems very odd to me that they'd be having a sale during their peak travel time. That's normally when they increase prices, not decrease them. If it was me, I certainly would not wait to book any trips during that period. In the past, I've always booked my summer travel as early as possible, though it's normally with OZ, not KE. When I've had to wait in the past due to my schedule not being fixed until late, I had to pay some very expensive fares, and in one case had to book a business class ticket instead of economy.

Now if for some reason a particular destination isn't selling well, then I could see perhaps they'd have a sale for that particular route, but I would think CEB would be very popular with vacationers. More so than Vietnam.

The Philippines seems to be a difficult route for me. There are times when it seems booked solid for a month or more at a time. I've often bought my tickets 8 months in advance or more, especially during summer or December/January. If I know my plan and think it's fairly certain it's fixed, I never wait in hopes that it will open up more later. I would book my ticket ASAP. Waiting in hopes of it going on sale could potentially save you a couple hundred dollars. But the opposite is much more likely I'd think and you could find yourself spending many hundreds extra, or even worse not being able to find any route unless some odd route via another country.

I thought the same thing about discounts during peak season. But, last year I booked my ticket on Jeju Air to SGN for maybe 630,000. I moved on and then asked my boss to look for a ticket for friends less than a month later. They had the K class fares!

It was the same for BKK/HKT this winter. They had the sales for the Christmas period, too! Weird, but they have them. I paid 760,000 to BKK from HKT back to ICN.

My only reason for questioning is I looked at ICN-ATL to buy my ticket home. I go home the 2 weeks before the Philippines. KE.com said that the cheapo savers were sold out a week ago...but then they reappeared yesterday.

Such a fickle game.

What you described is not fare sale but availability of different fare classes which changes all the time. Fares don't change, the availability of that fare for specific flight changes.

What I mean is that the K fare class is Korean's class for the Super Savers, correct?

Fun fact: They launched Super Savers exactly around the same time as last year! They're still up for all destinations. A little more expensive than last year (I went to SGN last summer), actually.

Not fun fact: The tickets went EXTREMELY quickly. We changed our plans and looked into Manila. It ended up working in our favor as Cebu sold out even more quickly.

BUT, thanks to a stealth travel agent (and kind friends that translate)...she snagged two tickets at the sale price of 645,000 (plus a 20,000 TA fee). Grand savings of 40,000 each.

But, hey, that 40,000 is how much it costs for me to fly MNL to CEB round trip.

I guess being a dork and checking every day did pay off!

I just checked the KE website for the heck of it and saw ICN-MNL R/T for 565,500 KRW on a Super Saver at the end of July vs. 50,000 KRW more (615,500 KRW) for a regular fare for the same day. I guess the 645,000 KRW is for a more expensive season. I guess it all depends on the person, but for me hardly worth taking a chance and waiting around for such a small difference in fare, when you could end up paying much more if the days/route you want isn't available.

I'm traveling to Cebu this summer and booked my ticket with OZ about the time this thread was started. Paid 626,400 KRW. Looks like CEB is much more popular than MNL and availability is quite limited (ie. much higher fares) now, either on OZ or KE. My flexibility is quite limited, so whenever I decide to go someplace, I book whatever I can get at a reasonable price, and don't really care if some sale comes later and I could have saved some money.

Yeah, I hear you. Things were backwards for me. Actually Cebu wasn't my final destination, but the flights from ICN-MNL didn't have lower fares for the days I wanted so I booked to CEB instead, even though there's no direct flights from CEB to where I want to go. So I'm flying CEB-MNL, then MNL to my final destination. The cost was less than 1,000 PHP all-in per segment, and was cheaper than if I flew on a more expensive fare to MNL and then from there. I travel very light with just a small carry-on, so the cheapo fares on the domestic flights are a good deal, being they don't ding me for luggage fees. I used to buy a lot of pasalubong on each trip to hand out, but when I calculated needing to pay for a more expensive ticket or excess baggage fees, I figured it's cheaper and easier to just visit a supermarket there and buy the stuff.

It's all a sick, sick numbers game!

The lowest saver they had was 545,000 I believe, BUT that was 70% mileage and for the first half of the month. I am flying the very last week in July when public school lets out and everyone goes on vacation (July 27-August 4).

That's the downside to hagwon vacation. You have it at high season! This means I am gonna shell out 800,000 or so to Singapore/KUL this Christmas ahhhhh!

If you travel a lot back to the States, plus a lot to South East Asia, you can save considerably on your airfare if you can plan in advance and book tickets that include the USA and South East Asia, with Korea just being a long stopover. I do this all the time, and often pay about the same or less for the whole ticket than I would for just the Korea-USA portion. Of course if you're working for a hagwon, you might not be able to plan your schedule that much in advance, or be guaranteed you'll even be working there in the future after your contract expires.

I fly OZ but imagine it's probably similar if you were flying with KE. In the past I'd book the cheapest full-mileage earning class ex-USA, with a month-long or so stopover in Seoul, then continuing on to wherever it was I wanted to go in South East Asia for my vacation, followed by another long stopover in Seoul on the way back. Then do it all over again. These days I'm traveling to Thailand about every month or so, and ended up switching to buy my tickets ex-Thailand, with the stopovers in Korea, then to USA. It works out a bit cheaper that way, though not a whole lot. When I want to visit some other place though, I end up buying a separate ticket ex-Korea, which probably overall increases the total cost, compared to if I continued to buy the tickets ex-USA. Anyways, fares ex-Korea on KE or OZ are quite high, whereas fares ex-USA or ex-South East Asia are pretty cheap. For instance, you mentioned 800,000 KRW to SIN/KUL. I often pay roughly 1,300,000 KRW equivalent for R/T tickets BKK(or HKT)-ICN-LAX, meaning the transpac portion only ends up costing me something like 500,000 KRW when compared to if I'd purchased it separately and paid 800,000 KRW for the South East Asia portion only. It works out well for me, but requires a lot of advance planning that's not always easy to do.

Sometimes I don't even need to be traveling on one portion of the ticket (either the transpac or the South East Asia), but I love flying and love racking up the miles, so don't mind doing a trip with an immediate turnaround or only staying a single day before returning. That was a bit of a problem though when purchasing tickets ex-USA being the cheapo fares sometimes had a minimum stay at the outmost point, and I wouldn't be able to stay that long being often it was just for a day or weekend. But buying my tickets in Thailand solves that problem being they don't have that restriction, nor do they even have any fares that aren't full mileage earning. I don't know though if KE is the same or not.