Tiger Airways Singapore Pte Ltd, operating as Tigerair, was a low-cost airline headquartered in Singapore. It operated services to regional destinations in Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, Taiwan, China and India from its main base at Singapore Changi Airport. It was founded as an independent airline in 2003, and was listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange under the Tiger Airways Holdings name in 2010. In October 2014, parent company Tiger Airways Holdings became a subsidiary of the SIA Group, who took a 56% ownership stake.
On 18 May 2016, Singapore Airlines established Budget Aviation Holdings, a holding company to own and manage its budget airlines Scoot and Tiger Airways following the delisting of Tiger Airways from the Singapore Stock Exchange. Tigerair merged with Scoot on 25 July 2017, operating under the Scoot brand.
History
Establishment
Tiger Airways Singapore was incorporated on 12 December 2003 and began ticket sales on 31 August 2004. It has its head office in the Honeywell Building in Changi, Singapore.
Services commenced on 15 September 2004 to Bangkok. Scheduled international services are operated from Singapore Changi Airport. The airline is a subsidiary of Tiger Airways Holdings, a Singapore-based company.
In 2006, the airline flew 1.2 million passengers, a growth of 75% from the previous year.
The airline was the first to operate from the Budget Terminal at Changi Airport as part of its cost-saving operations structure, similar to Ryanair's. Despite regional competition, the airline has reiterated its current intention to remain focused on flying within a five-hour radius from its Singaporean base.
As of 25 September 2012, Tigerair Singapore operates from Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 2 due to the demolition of the Budget Terminal to make way for Terminal 4, completed in 2017.
Route Strategy
The airline flew into a period of relative difficulty for the aviation industry with rising oil prices and intense competition from other airlines. The airline held off imposing fuel surcharges as its competitors had done.
With Singapore Airlines (SIA) having a stake in the airline, the airline occasionally fills in the gap when SIA drops its services from certain destinations. Macau, once served by SIA before being taken up by its subsidiary, SilkAir, in 2002, terminated all flights completely by the end of 2004. Three months later, the route was taken over by Tigerair with flights commencing 25 March 2005. A similar pattern can be observed in Krabi, where SilkAir suspended services in February 2005 in the wake of the effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Tigerair resumed direct services to the location on 7 October 2005.
In late July 2005, it was announced that the airline would commence flights from Macau to Manila (Clark) on 30 October 2005, a much-heralded move as it may signal the establishment of a secondary base besides Singapore, allowing the airline to expand and diversify risks.
On 21 September 2005, the company produced a report card on its first year of operations, with a total of over 500,000 passengers carried, 5000 scheduled flights flown, and a flight completion rate of 98.7 per cent. 94 per cent of flight departures and 90 per cent of arrivals took place according to schedule. It acquired four aircraft and launched a total of nine routes – of which four are flown exclusively by the airline – during the year.
The airline expected to increase its fleet to nine Airbus A320 aircraft by end-2006, and to carry up to three million passengers a year by then. It also hoped to add six more routes during the year, primarily to destinations in China and India, with flights to Southern China having commenced in April.
The airline also announced its switch from Singapore Airport Terminal Services to Swissport for ground handling once it became the first airline to operate at the newly opened Budget Terminal in Changi Airport on 26 March 2006.
Tigerair became the first Singaporean low-cost carrier to receive operating permits from the Chinese aviation authorities to fly to the southern Chinese cities of Haikou, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in an announcement on 21 February 2006. Ticket sales to these destinations commenced on 24 February 2006, with the first flight to Shenzhen taking place on 15 April, to Haikou from 26 April and to Guangzhou from 27 April 2006. The airline has since indicated that the routes were highly popular, with increased flights to Haikou and Guangzhou less than three months since their launch.