Tiger Airways has been in hiding this morning over continued service failures and has not answered serious questions about its capacity or willingness to fulfil its Australian timetable.
Yesterday’s widely reported act of bastardry involved the sale of a non-existent flight to a Melbourne woman and its refusal to compensate her for the cost of an alternative flight on Jetstar.
The heat was turned up this morning by intense dissatisfaction with sudden changes to its Canberra timetable, despite its announcement of a fresh round of cheap deals.
More than a year after being launched with promises of extensive services, Tiger has a trivial but untrustworthy presence in Australia with only five jets in service.
The fine print in its fare contract gives it the right to change both the fare and schedule any time it likes without prior notice.
It also says the airline is not liable whatsoever for any losses this causes to its customers.
This is starting to resemble a licence to rob. It says it can change anything it likes, whenever it likes, and leave the customers to wear the consequent losses.
Tiger needs to explain these and other aspects of its operations.
Is it going to persevere with its original ambition of an extensive network of flights at very low fares using dozens of jets?
Is this the same Tiger that has all but disappeared from Newcastle Airport after such fanfare heralding a well-publicised arrival only a couple of years back?
It has always been difficult to obtain fairness and openness in commercial airlines in this country and 2009 is no exception. At the very least, it is time for the ACCC to establish minimum standards of ticketing and pricing within Australia and beyond.
At the very least, a plain words contract which means exactlt what it says, deviod of fine print, is needed.
By the way, Telstra needs similar external standard setting..