Tiger Airways, Australian agency in crisis talks

SYDNEY (AP) — Tiger Airways executives were holding crisis talks with officials from Australia’s air safety watchdog yesterday after the regulators grounded all Australian domestic flights of a Tiger subsidiary over safety concerns.

The meeting with Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority comes two days after the agency announced that Tiger Airways Australia’s entire domestic fleet of 10 airliners was grounded for five business days, a move that affects about 35,000 passengers.

The Australian safety regulators said the budget airline twice flew under the minimum allowed altitude, prompting concerns that the carrier posed a serious and imminent risk to air safety. The grounding will cost the airline $S2 million ($1.63 million) a week, Singapore-based Tiger Airways Holdings Ltd. said.

Tiger Airways Holdings CEO Tony Davis, who was expected to attend yesterday’s meeting, said he does not believe there are immediate safety risks.

“Clearly we want to make sure that our services are as safe as they possibly can be and clearly when CASA has concerns, we have to take those seriously,” Davis told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “But we think that the specific issues that they’ve raised with us are still under investigation.”

Safety authority spokesman Peter Gibson said the meeting will focus on the two incidents in which Tiger is accused of flying too low on approaches to Australian airports. The authority also plan to discuss broader safety concerns it has with the airline.

It’s unlikely the meeting will result in a quick resolution, Gibson said.

If by the end of the week there are still lingering concerns, the safety authority will go to the Federal Court to seek an extension of the grounding, Gibson said. It was impossible to predict the likelihood of that happening, he said.

“I know that’s frustrating to passengers and we certainly apologize for that, but our focus has got to be primarily on safety,” he said.

Tiger, the fourth-largest domestic airline in Australia, is refunding the fares of passengers whose flights have been canceled.

In a statement, the airline said it is cooperating fully with the safety agency.

Tiger is 49 percent owned by national carrier Singapore Airlines Ltd. and 11 percent owned by state-owned investment company Temasek Holdings.