JohnMcGhie -
I felt sorry for the poor sods trundling onto a Tiger flight in Cairns for a non-stop to Perth. But Sydney to Melbourne, why not?
How many years ago was that? The only airline now flying non-stop CNS-PER or PER-CNS is JQ. I flew JQ PER-CNS 6 weeks ago and there's little difference between JQ and TigerAir. I also flew TigerAir CNS-BNE 2 weeks later, and the experience was little different to JQ. They both largely run late, they both suffer from disorganisation, and they both give pax the bare minimum. On the JQ flight PER-CNS, we weren't even offered water - not even to buy.
I must grudgingly admit, the JQ flight PER-CNS was on time (1st time
ever, in my JQ experience), but I would also guess being a full-on red-eye flight, helped in that regard.
I flew with QF, BNE-PER a couple of weeks later again, they were 2 hrs late, and we had bugger-all entertainment, thanks to the use of a former JQ Airbus (the Capt did actually apologise for the lack of entertainment due to an upgrade that is well behind schedule, apparently).
I've flown VA, TT, JQ and QF, multiple times in the last year and I'm getting about the same level of treatment from all of them. There's some pretty ordinary levels of performance in the airline industry currently.
I'm having trouble actually remembering the last time I flew where I really enjoyed the flight, where it was on time, and where there wasn't some level of disorganisation.