Small tiger takes flight fight to the air giants

A small British firm offering flying lessons in vintage bi-planes is set to take on the might of international airlines in a dispute about its name.

Tiger Airways is run by Chris Rollings and his partner Tizi Hodson from a base in Gloucestershire.

Set up in October 2001, it takes its name from the 1930s vintage bi-plane the Tiger Moth.

The company offers lessons in flying open cockpit, two-seater planes designed in the same decade. It owns two of the aircraft and leases a third.

Later this year Singapore Airlines and the founder of Irish budget airline Ryanair are set to launch a no-frills Asian carrier, also to be called Tiger Airways.

But the West Country firm fears the move could confuse its customers and cause it to lose business.

Now the partners have applied to register the name as a trade mark and will next week meet specialist lawyers to discuss their next move.

“I accept that we are not likely to have someone who sets out to buy a flight in a vintage bi-plane with us and gets sidetracked into buying a cheap ticket on a 747 from Singapore to Hong Kong instead,” said Mr Hollings.

“My concern is that anyone who has been made aware of Tiger Airways in the UK vintage bi-plane context who makes a search for us on the internet using our name is very probably going to be discouraged by the fact that Tiger Airways seems to be completely different.”

Mr Rollings, the company’s flight operations director, said he feared that anyone then entering a search under different criteria may be directed to their competitors.

The firm has slowly built up business so that it is now fairly busy, he said, with a large proportion of trade coming through word of mouth followed by new customers finding contact details via the internet.

“We will make as much of a fight of it as we can,” he said.