Tiger Airways Blues

dirtyRU

dirtyRU

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Have you guys down under heard about this? Dale Watson, who's a pretty big name in country music here in TX, mostly known for his old school-johnny cash type music had a good run in with Tiger Airways down in Australia. From what it looks like, he's got a descent following down there.
Anyway's, heard him talking on the radio in Austin this morning & got a kick out of the video he made. After that, they were quick to give him his money back!

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/tiger-airways-blues-country-singer-just-wants-his-cds-back-20110719-1hmlu.html

Now i hear they are grounded for safety concerns and continue to sell tickets despite the uncertainty of their own company. Steer clear of these guys!
 
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They are still grounded. They aim for super low cost and for a while there was a regular TV show here that was all about the trials and tribulations of flying with them. The irony is that Tiger would be the last airline I'd ever fly with, while their owner Singapore Airlines has probably the best reputation of any airline for quality. I can only imagine the singer must be hard up if the best he can fly is Tiger. Has he not heard of Qantas? Anyway, with Tiger you get what you pay for. (Just flew back from Perth on a Qantas 747 and they are the pick of the local carriers, even if their cabin crew are, um not as good (attractive) as Virgin)
 
Yeah, that's what i hear about them. Being from America, he may not have known any better. The budget airlines out here that offer low airfare have pretty good reputations. Not sure how hard up he could be with that bus he's singing in front of goes for about $250k. Sad thing is he could have just paid for a more expensive, nicer airline with the $500 excess baggage fee he had to pay for a box of cd's. Now that's some crap.
 
Yes I did see that not so long ago. They didn't want to refund / compensate him for his lost property ($3K worth of CD's that they lost) so he took things further. It's amazing what a little publicity will do :iconwink:

Rally said:
Anyway, with Tiger you get what you pay for. (Just flew back from Perth on a Qantas 747 and they are the pick of the local carriers, even if their cabin crew are, um not as good (attractive) as Virgin)
Click to expand...
I've heard way too many stories about how bad Tiger is & wouldn't fly with them ever :yell: in a million years.
What you said Rally is so true...you only get what you pay for ;)

Regards
Mr Turbo
 
Interesting. We had a thread on our club forum about international airlines. Singapore Airlines came out on top easily, and Emirates was also very good. Qantas did ok, but Lufthansa, Garuda, Air India and the Chinese and a number of US airlines did poorly. Personally, I like Emirates and Qantas. Air France only flew once and there was heaps of room but very old plane. Austrian Airlines ok but like Air France only short flights. Not keen on Virgin for anything but short flights. Won't fly Air New Zealand or Etihad again.

As for safety, Qantas has the best safety record in the world but I worry greatly about their servicing of aircraft now they are being serviced overseas. Some of the Asian airlines are a real worry but not Singapore. I hear such good things from so many people about Singapore I'm keen to try them out.
 
I flew Qatar Aiirlines from KL to Phuket on thursday night, it was a huge plane, 333 Airbus A330 -300, huge rattly noisy old thing, I've never seen anything so filthy, I know people treat planes like rubbish bins but it must have been a month since it was vacuumed, thank allah it was only a 75min flight, food was vile enough to spit the first mouthfull back into the box but the girls were lovely and they said it was the quickest load they had ever done, I did a headcount when we were departing & a max of 45 passengers.

On arrival at the airport I had my paid for e - ticket but had lost my mastrecard somewhere between Perth & Melaka and they wanted to sight the one I had used to pay for the ticket (what a pain in the arse, luckily got my new one in time) and because I couldn't provide the original I had to go down to the office and pay for it AGAIN with the new one..I'll be refunded but it had me pretty confused, anyone know why? I'd say on a similar level with Tiger.........but on time lol.
 
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Sometime ago i posted about Tiger and their dishonest dealings regarding picking a seat when you book and then get charged for it and my experience re their web check in.
Now their safety record is questionable. It does not matter which way you look at it....an airline being grounded in this country is a BIG deal and should never happen.
They are a bunch of shonks in my opinion and i will never fly with them again. I'd rather pay a bit more.
 
For me it is simple- for domestic flights Qantas is by the far the best.
 
If you want to go from A to B for the lowest possible price you can't beat Tiger. Also if you fly Melbourne to Mackay they're the only bloody airline to go direct. My family have been hoping desperately they survive this ban so we can get that direct flight again. Melb - Machaky with Tiger about 150-200 per ticket, any other airline its 400+. Multiply that differene by 1 mother and 2 kids and a return flight and it adds up!

They were cheap and you should know exactly what you're getting. Book in on line, have carry on luggage only (preferabley) and don't be late! It's cheap and efficient flying. Many complaints i've seen about Tiger are people arriving late and then whining about losing their seat. I think the problem is people who want Tiger prices and quantas service.

Quantas is nice if the company/government is paying, or cost isn't an issue for you. Free booze!!!!
 
Yeah thats all OK and i agree up to a point BUT they are dishonest. There was no mention that an extra charge would be incurred until AFTER i picked my seat online. When i tried to do a web check in it simply would not let me do it. It told me my reference number was invalid.
There was no warning to print the page out that i saw and so i was hit with a $25 charge for doing a counter check in. On my return flight on tiger i was complaining to the people next to me about my experience and they said exactly the same thing happened to them. The person behind us told us the same and a lady caught up with us and told us she overheard what we were talking about and had the same experience. Coincidence?? Maybe!!
The guy at Andrews Car Parking at Tullamarine told me he just wanted Tiger to go to Avalon as they caused him so many problems re late arrivals or NO arrivals as if the planes were not full they simply would not fly.
I told people at work about my experience and the manager told me her kids were flying Tiger from Darwin to Melbourne and when they turned up the flight was cancelled.
I contrast this with Virgin where i had no problems whatsoever. I rather pay a bit more and be confident things will go right.
 
Quite right there Venom. I used to laugh when watching the show the people who'd arrive late and expect to still board. Hold up the whole airport because they couldn't get their act together. But it's the same for all airlines- if you're late, you miss the flight. I came so close to missing a flight to Melbourne because I made the stupid mistake of relying on NSW Railways. Never again- but the reason I did not miss the flight was because I'd allowed lots of time just in case. I'm flying to Adelaide on Tuesday- the flight leaves at 0630. I plan to be at the airport by no later than say 0530, which means I leave home at 0430. Next month I fly to Perth and that flight leaves at 0600, and because I'm using the long term car park on that trip I need to set aside more time again. I need to keep in mind for both flights that there are road works on the M2 which will cause delays.

As for what Silver experienced then that is pretty poor. Why are flights cancelled? Maybe because something that should have been replaced before it broke was not, and that is just cost cutting.
 
Forgetting all of the above for a minute.
I've been around for quite a few years and in my lifetime i cannot remember ANY airline in Australia being grounded for 6 weeks because of safety concerns. Qantas has also been around for a long time and must have one, if not the best, record in the history of commercial aviation. This is no accident.
Tiger tried to do things on the cheap and got caught. They put their customers at risk and this way of doing business matches exactly with my experience with them. I think that this is no accident but an very poor business approach.
Do you really want your family, friends or yourself to have people like this in charge of your life?
I don't.
 
Hard to argue with that. Qantas have been going longer than almost anyone, they have never crashed and are the world's safest airline. I just hope they still have the same emphasis on safety that they did years ago
 
Yea they did have some dodgy stuff with hidden charges on their website for picking seats. Fair enough they got slammed for that. There's few things worse then someone sneaking into your wallet!

The main issue with the grounding was pilot training/qualification, they were lucky there wasn't a major incident. You'd hope now this had bee done and they've survived, you'd think they'd be doing %110 to make sure it never happens again.
 
Well actually British airways, air canada, & some japanese airline rank above qantas as far as safety goes when you look at the amount of flights vs fatalities. Of course, Qantas is a smaller operation compared to the others only flying around 2.5 mill flights a year vs the near double the other airlines do. However, i'll give them this.. There's no North American airline companies on there. Granted there's more flight here than anywhere else in the world which increases your exposure, but still.
 
You're quite right Matt- Qantas is small compared to many other airlines, and even though Qantas has been flying longer than almost all of them, there is no doubt the more you fly the greater the chance of something going wrong. And our weather here is generally far better than the extremes of Europe and the US. But I'm not sure how they can rank above Qantas because you can't do better than zero crashes. Anyway, until Qantas start paying me to promote them I'll just say that the good airlines are all much safer than driving to the airport and I'd happily fly Emirates again- and Singapore. BA are huge and they seem to be pretty safe as you say. I flew with them to London and while I know people who did not like the service I found them to be fine.
 
Inspired by Matt's post, I did a little bit of research on the topic of safe airlines and it would be fair to say that there really is little to choose safety wise between them. BA have done remarkably well- even better than I thought and are very impressive. I guess when I think of British companies I tend to think of the old Leyland mentality, yet there is no doubt BA is in another world to that. And it's not just BA but some other airlines as well- some of which I'd never heard of. A bit surprised Lufthansa were not in there- or Austrian and it's a bit sad no US airline is in there. Anyway, thanks Matt for inspiring me to look further into this.
 
Regarding BA. I'm not sure if it was them but early in the jet engine age there was a plane called the Comet, i think it was built by a British comapany, maybe Hawker, that crashed quite a few times because of the structual weakness of the square (rather than round) windows they used.
I also have a memory of a plane that crashed at Sydneys' Kingsford Smith Airport. I think it went into Botany Bay but can't remember who owned it. Qantas or maybe Ansett or TAA.
 
Not a problem Rally, it gave me something new to read up on! One thing I'm not to sure about is how their "deaths" are actually classified. Not many of them really specify "crashes", it's just deaths. So i'm assuming they get dinged on safety records for even people who die on board flights that may be out of their control like health problems. That & also calculating "how many" flights since their last issue. So whether you look at BA (as an example) and say someone died on their flight 4yrs ago, well & Qantas that had one, lets say 9yrs ago, BA would still be ranked higher because it's had more flights since that last death.
But yeah, with all the different airline companies that we have here in the states, it's quite a shame that not one of them make's the top 10!
 
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