Budget carrier
Tigerair Australia
has unveiled plans to fly from Sydney to Perth in its first capacity move since coming under the control of
Virgin Australia Holdings
in July.

It will add the new route using its existing fleet of 11 aircraft by optimising the use of the four based in Sydney, which will help lower it average costs but could spark a competitive response from
Jetstar
.

Tigerair boss Rob Sharp said up to six flights a week from Sydney to Perth would be added from December 19, in part due to the successful performance on the Melbourne-Perth route. The low-cost airline first added those flights in September 2011 and has since increased frequencies to as many as three a day in peak periods.

Tigerair’s Sydney-Perth flights will leave in the late evening from Sydney and arrive in Perth by midnight, and the return flight will be a red-eye from Perth to Sydney. Virgin is expected to deploy Tigerair as a competitive response to Jetstar as it takes its main brand upmarket.

Big brother’s watching

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“There has been coordination of route strategy and discussions with Virgin," Mr Sharp told The Australian Financial Review on Thursday. “Timings certainly get co-ordinated. We are looking at what timings best suit the customer and since we are focusing on different market dynamics, synergies are usually pretty good."

Mr Sharp said being under the control of Virgin would also help improve Tigerair’s reliability, which can sometimes be challenging with a small fleet and not many frequencies to destinations. “If there is capacity in the market we can certainly put passengers onto a Virgin flight if they had a flight and we had a disruption," he said. “Having the big brother next to you and assisting is very useful."

Tigerair posted on-time performance of 76.3 per cent last year, which was worse than Qantas and Virgin but slightly above budget rival Jetstar at 76.1 per cent. Mr Sharp said Tigerair’s performance should improve as its fleet grows and its flexibility increases as a result. The airline, which has added six new routes this year, plans to double its fleet to 22 Airbus A320 aircraft by 2018.

Mr Sharp declined to reveal when Tigerair would take delivery of its next aircraft on order or its new route plans.

“We are obviously growing, but commercially it is a very competitive industry so anything around capacity and deployment, at this stage we are not making any comment," he said.

Any capacity increases by Tigerair are likely to be matched by Jetstar as part of Qantas’s strategy of maintaining 65 per cent market share domestically.