Tony the Tiger meets The Mole – exclusive interview

In an exclusive TravelMole interview, Tony Davis, CEO Tiger Airways [Pictured]who was in Sydney this week for the Asia Pacific Aviation Summit at the Hilton and to speak at the ASEAN afternoon conference at the Westin, told The Mole that Tiger Airways was delighted that Jetstar had given Tiger so much free publicity and Tiger was not in Australia not here to lose money.

He said that he had moved to Asia Pacific because it was the world’s fastest growing and most populous economy where flying is dominant, with three billion people now living in Asia Pacific and that in 18 months Tiger has grown to fly to all the major countries in the region, now carrying 3m passengers a year.

He said, “We are also now repaying Jetstar the favour they paid us three years ago when they set up in Singapore by our now setting up in Melbourne.”

“Effectively what he have done in Asia is set up Ryanair in Asia and that is also what we are doing in Australia.” 

“One aircraft type, one set of engineers, one type training process for pilots, these all bringing economies of scale.”  “We have also ordered lots of planes as having volume is really important to us and the only problem we believe we will have in Australia, is having enough aircraft to keep up with demand!”

“I suppose a key difference between us and a traditional carrier is that with a traditional carrier when the aircraft is heading towards full, they put up the fare, whereas with us, we put on another aircraft!”

Tony also said that Tiger was now preventing Australian online companies selling its flights on their websites, because why it when Tiger has its own web presence, so web scraping Tiger on to web sites is over, with the carrier focussing on generating revenue through its own website.

He did say though that Tiger was keen to work with traditional agents through their Sky Agents programme and anyone interested should check it out as long as they understood that the Tiger model was different – there were no commissions, but if they packaged a Tiger air fare together with hotel, car rental and say attractions and activities, etc and charge a fee for doing it all, then they would do well out of using Tiger.

Tony said that he was very happy with consumer reaction in Australia, which was better than he ever anticipated, saying. “We don’t spend a lot of time analysing others, but we do spend our time providing good product at a good price and if we do that consumers will book us – we know that and have proven it.”

“We have demonstrated that we are serious and people can see our fares are lower so it is very clear that we are a better proposition than the others in the market.”

“On two of our seven current routes in Australia we will be the only non-stop operator and thes are routes where other airlines have ignored consumer demand.” 

“Also on the Alice route for example, we are $500 cheaper than the national carrier, so we are clearly providing and affordable service to consumers who want it.”

“Our model is simple and is different to the others – all the others are based on supply and demand in that they price their product according to that supply and demand, often appearing to restrict supply with the effect of increasing prices.”

“We price our product according to our costs of operation not supply and demand, another key point of difference between us.”

“We are firm believers in the principle of build it and people will come to it”

Tiger Airways will be based in Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport, described by Tony as the “real” Melbourne airport, saying, “We are clearly competing head on with Jetstar, but we will have the most geographically diverse network here and the lowest prices.”

He closed by saying. “Some of the things we’ve done with our business we’ve actually learned from fast food and these are the industries we take our inspiration from with their principles now becoming ours – stack it high, sell it cheap.”

Exclusive interview by The Mole