Tiger forced to delay Alice Springs launch

[Standby]

Tiger forced to delay Alice Springs launch
Steve Jones



Tiger Airways has slammed Qantas after being forced to delay the launch of services to Alice Springs by three months.

The low cost carrier was due to begin services on December 1 but will not start operations now until March 1.

Tiger directly blamed Qantas after the flag carrier said it would be unable to provide ground handling services for Tiger at Alice Springs airport.

Tiger chief executive Tony Davis said; “The behaviour of Qantas shows their contempt for the people of Alice Springs and certainly shows why Qantas is so desperate to maintain its dominance of the Australian domestic market.

“It is common practice in the aviation business for airlines to undertake ground handling for third party customers at commercial rates. Indeed, Qantas already handles a number of other airlines across Australia and was more than willing to accept Tiger’s money when we launched services to Darwin.”

Tiger said it spent months negotiating with Qantas, who it described as having a monopoly of ground handling at Alice Springs, and even offered to reschedule the timing of its flights.

The carrier will now organize for another ground handling company to establish itself at the airport.

“Unfortunately this takes time,” Tiger said in a statement.

Passengers with bookings will be refunded or can re-book on a flight after March 1. All affected passengers will also receive a $50 voucher towards a future flight.

23 November 2007

Let me think where in AUST does DJ and Qantas or JQ or vv...answer nowhere...what a naive expectation .Blame someone else for your own shortcomings.
And the offer of a refund and an extra $50 voucher to use on Tiger is slightly less than sorry we'll transfer you to another carrier as and answers a question in the thread earlier relating to poss delay start up.

[Shano]

Mods, maybe it is time to start a Tiger Forum to accommodate the growing number of Tiger threads ?

Oops, just realised that those are loyalty program forums not general airline forums

[NM]

Originally Posted by Shano

Mods, maybe it is time to start a Tiger Forum to accommodate the growing number of Tiger threads ?

Only Admin can create new fora.

But since this is a media article, I am moving it to the Travel Articles forum.

please note that for copyright purposes, it is best to only quote a brief part of the media article and to include the URL link to the original source.

[SeaWolf]

Well, I'm not really surprised that QF is being unhelpful here, but I would have thought that if they were the monopoly ground handling company up there that they'd have some kind of obligation to provide those services, even if its fondest wish would be to see Tiger crash and burn.

[sf#7]

I wld like to see a poll from ppl to see if they think Tiger will last here in OZ?

[gstok]

Hmmm, I'm hoping to see more info on this. I've only seen it so far on The Age - not on Tiger or any other news source.

If I read it correctly Tiger had a pre-arrangement with Qantas to provide ground services. Qantas appears to have cancelled it at the last minute. This would explain their anger. And rightfully so.

I was supposed to fly Dec 1 - a mere 8 days away. I think Tiger is going to need to be more 'generous' to people flying in the first flights to cover any cancellation charges they may not be able to avoid. The 'travel insurance' excuse will not hold up well here.

With approx. 200 passengers per flight, and 3 months worth of flights, there's going to be a lot of unhappy campers.

Will Tiger last in Oz? I think so, absolutely. They have a large backer, and their IT services are 6000% better than Jetstar. No crashes, no pathetic sales with a lousy number of seats, no servers that go down during high load, and so on. Good luck to them I say.

[docjames]

Well, you want to service anywhere that has a monopoly, you've got to be prepared to pay full whack. If you're not, either
1. Pay it
2. Set up your own (which takes time)
3. Pay it until #2 is complete.

You need skill and training to be ground crew, and i'd suspect the cost of keeping someone with appropriate skills in a town like Alice Springs would be fairly high.

Did they expect to get the service for chicken feed? They're subsidised at every other airport that's gagging for them to fly there. Maybe they've underestimated the costs of flying to/from Alice Springs.

Also, if they've released such a statement, dont expect Qantas Group to take it lying down either.

[oz_mark]

Originally Posted by docjames

Well, you want to service anywhere that has a monopoly, you've got to be prepared to pay full whack. If you're not, either
1. Pay it
2. Set up your own (which takes time)
3. Pay it until #2 is complete.

You need skill and training to be ground crew, and i'd suspect the cost of keeping someone with appropriate skills in a town like Alice Springs would be fairly high.

Did they expect to get the service for chicken feed? They're subsidised at every other airport that's gagging for them to fly there. Maybe they've underestimated the costs of flying to/from Alice Springs.

Also, if they've released such a statement, dont expect Qantas Group to take it lying down either.

In my reading the problem is they can't get Qantas to provide the service at any price, although it sounds as though Tiger was under the impression that the service would be available to them. They would hardly announce a service without some belief that they would be able to provide the service.

I guess the difference between Alice Springs and other airports is the other airports seem to have multiple providers of ground handling services.

[Mal]

Problems with flying to Alice were actually dicussed here a couple of days ago. Amazing how AFF keeps ahead of news channels at times

There is probably more to this story than what is published.

if i was Mr Davis, i would try to have nothing to do with Qantas, GO TIGER!!! (only18 hours or so to my TT flight!!!)