So many times, the budget airline, Tiger Airways has let us down... I've come to the conclusion that instead of saving about $50 on a flight with them (approximately 50% less than Virgin when sales are on, and 65% less than Qantas), the trade-offs aren't really worth it.
1. Flight times are not the best ... they have at most 2 flights a day... so we got a flight from Canberra to Melbourne for tomorrow night @ 9.55pm. Virgin and Qantas have more flights and they are scheduled at a better time, e.g. between 5pm - 8pm (and throughout the day).
2. We received an email in the last 2 hours (less than 24 hours before the scheduled flight), advising that there will be delays (Perth Airport's runway will be closed between 2am and 6am on Saturday 3rd October). I suppose I don't have all the information, but as a result of this closure, a flight from the day before is delayed 3 hours???) This is a 1-hour domestic flight, not an international flight where you can sleep for a few hours, overnight!
3. There is no guarantee that the new scheduled departure time of 12.45 am is going to run on time. Who knows - they might be delayed another hour or two.
4. On-line check in is NOT available... and so they make you turn up there at least an hour early (for a rushed, high-pressured check-in experience) as they close the check-in for the flight 45 minutes before the scheduled departure time. If you're the nice rule-abiding person and you turn up say 90 minutes early ... there would be easily 60-100 other nice rule-abiding persons ahead of you. So you end up waiting to be served. Alternatively, you could turn up 2 hours early, but of course you get to WAIT the next 2 hours for your flight to leave, again ASSUMING that it isn't delayed.
So, for the $50 ... you might end up losing more money (e.g. taking a cab from the airport as it's so late at night), losing a lot of time, patience, energy and effort from waiting and waiting and waiting, and worse - having your plans changed on you, with no compensation, refunds, credit, flight change options, nothing - ZIP, NADA, ZILCH.
Tiger Airways - good for competition ... hopefully they'll keep Virgin Blue and Qantas fairly competitive (though Virgin is not making much $$ lately) but I'm going to take my $50 and happily put in the extra $30 - $50 to go to their competition!
1. Flight times are not the best ... they have at most 2 flights a day... so we got a flight from Canberra to Melbourne for tomorrow night @ 9.55pm. Virgin and Qantas have more flights and they are scheduled at a better time, e.g. between 5pm - 8pm (and throughout the day).
2. We received an email in the last 2 hours (less than 24 hours before the scheduled flight), advising that there will be delays (Perth Airport's runway will be closed between 2am and 6am on Saturday 3rd October). I suppose I don't have all the information, but as a result of this closure, a flight from the day before is delayed 3 hours???) This is a 1-hour domestic flight, not an international flight where you can sleep for a few hours, overnight!
3. There is no guarantee that the new scheduled departure time of 12.45 am is going to run on time. Who knows - they might be delayed another hour or two.
4. On-line check in is NOT available... and so they make you turn up there at least an hour early (for a rushed, high-pressured check-in experience) as they close the check-in for the flight 45 minutes before the scheduled departure time. If you're the nice rule-abiding person and you turn up say 90 minutes early ... there would be easily 60-100 other nice rule-abiding persons ahead of you. So you end up waiting to be served. Alternatively, you could turn up 2 hours early, but of course you get to WAIT the next 2 hours for your flight to leave, again ASSUMING that it isn't delayed.
So, for the $50 ... you might end up losing more money (e.g. taking a cab from the airport as it's so late at night), losing a lot of time, patience, energy and effort from waiting and waiting and waiting, and worse - having your plans changed on you, with no compensation, refunds, credit, flight change options, nothing - ZIP, NADA, ZILCH.
Tiger Airways - good for competition ... hopefully they'll keep Virgin Blue and Qantas fairly competitive (though Virgin is not making much $$ lately) but I'm going to take my $50 and happily put in the extra $30 - $50 to go to their competition!
