It operated services to regional destinations in Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, Taiwan, China and India from its main base at Singapore Changi Airport.

It was founded as an independent airline in 2003, and was listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange under the Tiger Airways Holdings name in 2010.

In October 2014, parent company Tiger Airways Holdings became a subsidiary of the SIA Group, who took a 56% ownership stake.

Despite regional competition, the airline has reiterated its current intention to remain focused on flying within a five-hour radius from its Singaporean base.

A similar pattern can be observed in Krabi, where SilkAir suspended services in February 2005 in the wake of the effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

The airline expected to increase its fleet to nine Airbus A320 aircraft by end-2006, and to carry up to three million passengers a year by then.

The airline has since indicated that the routes were highly popular, with increased flights to Haikou and Guangzhou less than three months since their launch.

On 20 July 2006, the media reported on the airline's intentions to increase its routes from 15 to 20 and to establish a second base city by the end of the year.

At the same time, it announced that it saw an increase of 81 per cent in passengers carried in the months of April to June since its move to the Budget Terminal in March, compared to the same period in the previous year.

On 19 August 2015, Tigerair announced it was expanding its network with the addition of Quanzhou and Lucknow as new destinations, commencing services on 28 September and 3 December respectively.

Tigerair's original founding shareholders were Singapore Airlines (49%), Bill Franke's Indigo Partners (24%); Tony Ryan's Irelandia Investments (16%) and Temasek Holdings (11%).

On 18 December 2007, Tigerair announced that it had taken up the options and made further orders to take their fleet of Airbus A320s to 70 in total.

[25] In October 2014, Tigerair announced 12 aircraft would be subleased to IndiGo over three to four years to reduce excess capacity.

Tigerair offered food and beverages available for purchase as part of a buy on board programme - Tigerbites.