Tiger Airways expects to fly in August

Added by Monique Robinson on July 30, 2011

Tiger Airways foresees resuming service by Friday August 5 2011, after being grounded for operational issues on 1st July 2011, according to sources.

Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority served Tiger Airways with a notice on Friday, outlining several formal conditions for it to be able to resume operations. CASA also confirmed that the airline had met formal conditions, following its month-long investigation into airline’s pilot training and safety systems.

The airline hopes to resume services soon because it is losing $1.5m per week in bookings. It will also refund fares of passengers booked till 4 August. Sources said that they will have to stop servicing a few Australian routes; pilots would also be affected.

Tiger Airways is said to resume service on a few routes and may concentrate on its core routes between Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide the Aviation sources said.

The airline notified the Avalon airport management of reducing its daily flights from five to four a day before it was grounded. Flights to Sydney and Perth were always full; Avalon airport manager Justin Giddings hoped the Tiger airways would stay.

Civil Aviation Safety Authority gave the Tiger airways notice requiring them to administer specific pilot simulator retraining during the past four weeks and also asked the airline to outline its plans of meeting the safety requirements. Tiger airways must satisfy the set safety criteria before being allowed to fly again.