Tiger Airways to fuel local competition

The Australian AVIATION, February 9, 2007

Steve Creedy

SINGAPORE-backed Tiger Airways has announced plans to launch a new domestic airline in Australia it says will break the "cosy duopoly" of Virgin Blue and Qantas and provide more than 1000 jobs.

Tiger chief Tony Davis said today the airline, based on European low-cost carrier Ryanair, had started the process to apply for an Australian Air Operator’s Certificate and had would have five new Airbus A320 aircraft available in for deployment this year.

"Fares are too high in Australia," Mr Davis said.

"We see the opportunity to deliver consistently low fares on all our routes. Unlike others in this market we won’t be a low cost airline selling high fares. We’ll be low cost and very low fare."

Mr Davis said that Asia had embraced the concept of genuine low fare travel but Australia had returned to a "cosy duopoly" that had seen fares increase.

He said the introduction of Tiger services between Darwin and Singapore had been a major boost to regional tourism in the Northern Territory and the airline was consistently selling fares on international flights cheaper than domestic specials offered by the Qantas-Virgin duopoly.

Tiger is also due to start Singapore-Perth flights next month.

"Australians love our model and are supporting it already in the thousands," he said. "We are now keen to extend that model to overpriced domestic market."

Tiger has yet to reveal details of routes and pricing but aviation sources speculated earlier this week that it would seek to operate from Perth to the Eastern States as well as on the lucrative golden triangle between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

However, as revealed in The Australian this week, it faces a ramped up Jetstar presence as well as the possibility that Qantas will transfer more Boeing 747-300 jumbo jets to its Sydney-Perth Cityflyer service.

Tiger has been flying since September, 2004, and operates to six cities in Thailand, two cities in Vietnam, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Haikou and Macau in China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Darwin.

Singapore Airlines has 49 per cent stake in the carrier while Singapore Government investment arm Temasek Holdings has 11 per cent.

Other shareholders include US private investment firm Indigo partners and Ryanair founder Tony Ryan.