Budget carrier Tiger Airways will add an extra return flight daily from Melbourne, potentially bringing another 46,000 tourists to the Gold Coast.The embattled airline made its winter schedule announcement yesterday, adding more than 380,000 seats Australia-wide as it tries to claw back domestic market share it lost while grounded by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in July last year.

It will offer $59.95 airfares from the Gold Coast to Melbourne between the end of March and the end of October.The airline, which restored a limited number of services in August 2011, is gradually increasing flights onits most popular routes in a bid to prove it is now taking its operational safety and punctuality seriously.Tiger Airways spokeswoman Vanessa Regan said the grounding gave Tiger a chance to re-evaluate what Australian passengers wanted, and the relaunched airline was now trying to improve its on-time performance, limit cancellations and improve its safety standards in preference to dirt-cheap fares.

We know that everyone wants low fares but they also want to be on time and for us to put operational excellence first, she said.We are keen to reinstate further services and we are talking to many airports . everywhere we used to fly wants us back.Certainly there is a lot of work to be done to reassure Australians and win back confidence but we are seeing really pleasing results.Tiger is currently flying seven of its 10 Australian-based aircraft and will look to have the other three back for 2012.Ms Regan said without Tiger’s low cost flights, fares across the board had risen but the return of the airline would bring competitiveness back to the market.

A Goldman Sachs Investment Research Report in May 2011 backed up that view when it studied the impacts if Tiger withdrew all services from Australia.It found Gold Coast Airport would suffer the most because it relied heavily on leisure travellers  Tiger’s main market.It also found real airfares had dropped 13 per cent since Tiger entered the market in 2007 and an exit would mean domestic travel would fall by 5 per cent and airfares would jump by 15 per cent without the competition from the low cost carrier.We would expect the remaining leisure carriers Jetstar and Virgin would raise airfares in response to a reduction in competitive pressures that have driven domestic airfares to their all-time low,the report said.