Tiger Airways has announced four new routes in Australia in a significant expansion for the low cost carrier.
Tiger Airways Australia this week announced four new domestic routes between Melbourne and Sunshine Coast, Sydney and Cairns, Sydney and Alice Springs plus Melbourne and Alice Springs.
The company’s Commercial Director, Carly Brear, says the news is exciting for the consumer, local economies and the airline.
“We are confident that a lot of our current and future customers will be very happy that we are bringing Tiger’s low fares to more of Australia,” she said.
“Tiger’s new services to Cairns and Sunshine Coast further increase our presence in Queensland, which is an ever popular state for our customers to visit and also provide additional connectivity for Queensland residents who have been extremely supportive of Tiger’s services to date.
“I’m particularly thrilled to tell the people of Alice Springs that we have listened. We’ve been inundated with requests for Tiger’s low cost flights to serve Central Australia, a community that currently lacks low cost options and critically is so heavily reliant on tourism.
“The people of Alice Springs will be the first to tell you that they won our recent online voting poll calling for Australian’s to vote where Tiger should fly to next and today we are announcing not one but two new routes into Alice from Australia’s two largest capital cities. It really is a case of ‘the people have spoken’ and Tiger has responded.”
This month Tiger Airways Australia will celebrate flying its 10 millionth customer since Australian operations began in November 2007.
Sunshine Coast Destination Ltd (SCDL) Marketing and Brand Director Veronica Rainbird welcomed the return of Tiger Airways to the Coast after an absence of nearly two years.
“Tiger will recommence operations on the Sunshine Coast-to-Melbourne route on March 27 in time for the Easter school holidays,” she said.
“This is fantastic news for our region providing much needed capacity on the Melbourne route.”
“It follows what has been an excellent Christmas season for our local tourism industry, and provides an extra shot in the arm for our tourism operators.”
Rainbird said the return of Tiger to the Sunshine Coast was the result of a great partnership between SCDL the airport and the Queensland Government through Tourism and Events Queensland.
Airport General Manager Peter Pallot said the re-introduced service will start with four flights a week, building to a daily service by June adding over 130,000 seats annually to the route.
“Tiger will operate the initial services Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays each week,” he said. “Tiger was a popular service here in the past and I am sure it will be again.”
Kylie Mansfield, Sales and Marketing Manager of the Alice Springs Convention Centre added: “We welcome Tiger back with open arms – Tiger represents a vital piece in the Business Tourism puzzle for Alice Springs.
“150,000 additional seats into Alice Springs really supplements our appeal as a Business Tourism destination. Having the flexibility of Tiger’s terrific low cost carrier service to now complement Qantas’ existing, comprehensive route network makes us even more accommodating and accessible,” she said.
In further growth related news for the airline, Tiger Airways is gearing up to commence flying its first NSW intrastate route between Sydney and Coffs Harbour which takes off from February 15, 2013, and will provide a welcome return service four times a week as well as an additional fifth Saturday service from March 2013 onwards.
“Not only does Tiger provide consistently great value fares and healthy competition to the market, we remain committed to customer satisfaction and will continue to respond to the needs of our customers,” she said.
“The airline’s overall customer satisfaction has improved markedly (Roy Morgan domestic airline satisfaction independent research survey, July – September 2012) and our customers, quite rightly, are our number one priority at all times.”