Tiger Airways Australia has today commenced services from its new Sydney base, in the process creating 150 jobs and providing up to 10 additional daily return flights (or up to 3,600 visitor seats) to some of Australia’s most popular destinations via Sydney Airport.

Today also marks the commencement of services on Tiger’s new Sydney – Gold Coast route with up to four daily return services providing over 1,400 daily additional visitor seats through Sydney and Gold Coast airports.

Tiger Airways CEO Andrew David, who was at Sydney Airport to greet passengers flying on the first of the new Sydney – Gold Coast services, said that while today’s news is not only great for consumers, domestic tourism and the economy, it is also a major milestone for the airline, which has been rebuilt in the past 11 months since services resumed on 12 August 2011.

“Today is an opportunity for Tiger to celebrate our accomplishments over the last 12 months whilst, importantly, we also reflect on our responsibilities as a credible and viable operation.”

“Our formative years are behind us,” said Mr. David. “Tiger has grown and we are now moving on with a great value service that all Australian travellers should try at least once. The million plus domestic passengers who have flown with us since we resumed operations have provided overwhelming support for the relaunched product.

“We’re proud of the airline today that provides affordable and reliable air travel and later today we’ll launch our first ever Australian television commercial to help spread the word.”

To encourage customers to travel with the relaunched airline and celebrate the launch of the new Sydney base Tiger Airways is today putting on sale 10,000 seats for $10* for travel now on the popular Melbourne – Sydney route. In addition, many other popular routes across Australia are on sale today for great value fares including Sydney – Gold Coast from $30, Brisbane – Sydney from $40 and Melbourne – Perth from $80. The sale goes live to the public today at around midday AEST.

Three aircraft will progressively operate from Tiger’s second Australian base in Sydney, providing extra capacity on existing services between Sydney and Melbourne (up to 11 daily return services on the Melbourne – Sydney route) and the opportunity to expand services such as the new routes between Sydney and Gold Coast and Sydney and Brisbane commencing respectively in July and August 2012.

Tiger Airways has now led the major domestic airline industry for ten straight months with market leading on time performance, an accomplishment which Andrew David also sees as indicative of Tiger’s future success as more Australians choose to fly with Tiger.

“We have the newest fleet of aircraft in Australia and our pilots are some of the most professional and experienced in the industry,” said Mr. David. “We have a great product and as more Australians are given the opportunity to try us we think they will like what they find.”