If you meet a tiger on the prowl it's bound to be pretty aggressive, and aggressive is a good word to describe low cost carrier Tiger Airways which just keeps on roarin'.
As if it wasn't enough to announce a million new mainland Australia routes last week, now Tiger's adding a bunch of extra flights between Melbourne and Tasmania; double the number of flights will now go to both Launceston and Hobart. The price of A$30 (US$25) is definitely a bargain.
The only place Tiger Airways is being slightly less aggressive is in Korea, where a deal with Incheon Airport to start a joint venture budget airline is now on hold. That's mainly because the local Korean budget airlines have bullied Incheon into giving up the idea. Seems tigers aren't always so brave.
Budget Asian carrier Tiger Airways announced a while back it was expanding its offerings in the Australian market with an Adelaide base. Finally, we have details!
A bunch of routes will head out of Adelaide to destinations such as Perth, Tasmania's capital Hobart and the Gold Coast, and they're increasing the Adelaide to Melbourne flights they've already started up. There will also be more flights from Melbourne to the Sunshine Coast--they'll run daily from December--and to Alice Springs, a good base for visiting the outback and the famous red rock of Uluru.
Just like Virgin Blue's western expansion, travelers bound for Oz and the Aussies themselves will hopefully get some cheerily cheap fares out of this. And it's about time.
Singapore Airlines budget offshoot Tiger Airways is defying world trends by continually expanding around the Australasian region, and this week all the news is in the land Down Under. And while it might be a bit exaggerated, it's not that far wrong to agree with Tiger when they say:
Before Tiger Airways came along, it was cheaper for travelers to go overseas than to get around their own country. It was a disgraceful situation but Tiger Airways' low fare revolution has changed that.
Tiger's just announced that they're starting regular Perth to Melbourne flights from October, with opening specials of A$99 ($90) for one-way flights including all taxes--less than half what other airlines would charge at their cheapest. Tiger's also decided to make the South Australian capital Adelaide into its second Aussie base and everyone's waiting to, uh, pounce on the new routes they'll start up there.
It's all good news from Singapore Airlines this week. For a start, the carrier's rolling out a new on-board entertainment system, called eX2, which has quite a few features we like. As well as nice new 1280x768 screens, it will also include some PC applications like Media Player and PDF and photo viewers. That means you won't even need your own computer to look at stuff--just plug in your USB stick and read your own documents, listen to your own music or scroll through your own photos.
At the same time, Singapore Airlines must be pretty pleased with itself that its young spin-off Tiger Airways is growing up. The budget carrier that services the Australasian region is 49 percent owned by Singapore Airlines but is already making enough money not to need any cash injections from Mom and Dad. Tiger is even talking about looking for other airlines to acquire.
So that's the week for Singapore Airlines: the mile high club isn't important on planes--plugging in your USB stick is and little Tigers can grow up to be big and strong. They must be smiling over there.
So much action in the flight routes of Australasia, so little time to fly every one of them. Big news this week came as Singapore and Malaysia finally opened up a route between the countries to competition. Until now, this flight has cost around $320, a crazy amount for just 55 minutes in the air.
There are plenty of potential takers for budget flights on the KL to Singapore route, with Tiger Airways (a 49% subsidiary of Singapore Airlines) and Qantas offshoot Jetstar already putting their hands up. AirAsia, a Malaysian low cost carrier, is also part of the market, with two flights per day on the route. It's now possible to grab tickets for only the cost of the airport taxes and charges.
And while the liberalization of this route is only partial--just four flights per day have been allocated to the budget carriers--the experts are predicting the traffic will triple within the next two years. The good news is that more openings of Southeast Asian routes should follow by the end of this year, which means we can fly more often and more cheaply. We're going to need some more time off work.
One of the hottest budget airlines in the Asia Pacific market at the moment is Singapore-based Tiger Airways, which recently expanded into the Australian market, too. Tiger is a pure-bred low cost carrier, set up expressly for that purpose in 2003, but Singapore Airlines is a 49% stakeholder.
Tiger's routes are largely flown through Singapore, although there is talk of setting up hubs in other Asian countries like the Philippines or South Korea. The airline's other main destinations include Australia, China, Thailand, India and Vietnam. Tiger's recent entry into the Australian market is real headline-grabbing budget stuff: flights as low as A$10 ($9) are on offer. Fares that low are definitely grrrreat.
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by amandak
