Tigerair Taiwan starts second route to South Korea

Tigerair Taiwan, which began operating in September 2014, has launched its first new route of 2017. On 19 January the LCC introduced a three times weekly (Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays) service between Taipei Taoyuan (TPE) and Busan (PUS) in South Korea. The 1,344-kilometre route is already flown by four other airlines; China Airlines (which owns 80% of Tigerair Taiwan) with 14 weekly flights, Air Busan with 12, Jeju Airlines with nine and Korean Air with a daily service. Tigerair Taiwan currently operates a fleet of nine 180-seat A320s and serves 13 destinations from Taipei (including Daegu in South Korea) and three from Kaohsiung. Routes from Taipei to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia and Singapore were recently dropped by the carrier. A new service from Taichung to Macau has been pencilled in to start at the end of March. The future of the airline is unclear as China Airlines is apparently considering buying the 10% of the airline owned by Budget Aviation Holdings of Singapore, the holding company for both Tigerair Singapore and Scoot. Tigerair Singapore will be merged into Scoot during 2017.