Another Tiger shooting party is on today at Jetstar as it offers 2,800 one-way fares of $28 between Avalon and your choice of Adelaide or Sydney online from 5pm for travel next winter.

So the servers will probably melt, like they did when 10,000 hits a second came in during its 5,000 seats at 5 cents blitz on 21 November.

Madness on the part of Jetstar? No. It’s just more Tiger baiting by the Qantas/Jetstar camp to remind the Singaporeans who is top cat in the local jungle. Which will inevitably lead to further retaliations from the Singaporean camp, at the time, places and prices of its choosing. But bargain hunters may not be the big winners they think if they stick with the same carrier for the return flight.

Once the customer has secured an ultra-cheapie one-way, the online booking engine will throw up options that will make the trip back cost a lot more than say 10 cents return. Expect something well above $120 so that on a typical inter-city flight, the airline is collecting the absolute minimum cost of operating those two flights on a per seat basis.

Smart buyers will look for their return flights on a different carrier, because there are always some daily bargains on any routes flown by the other airline, or Virgin Blue or Qantas, waiting to be discovered in their booking sites.

Jetstar’s $28 one-way specials which piggyback on an announcement this morning of a 40% boost in flights from Avalon next year might also be intended to dilute media coverage of an expected announcement by Tiger today that it will look for a second base to support its main base in Melbourne.

The Gold Coast airport would have to be the hot favourite, if only because Tiger wants to take the fight to AirAsia X as much as win market share from Jetstar and its Malaysian rival is building itself an early lead in the inbound budget market to SE Queensland which is in the same high growth sector Tiger’s owners are chasing all over SE Asia.