Tiger Airways Pte, a budget carrier partly owned by Singapore Airlines Ltd, will fly to three Chinese cities by April and seek more access to India, tapping consumers in the world's two most populous nations.

Tiger Airways will start flights to the southern Chinese cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Haikou, Chief Executive Officer Tony Davis said.

The airline, which is also starting flights to the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, has separately asked Singapore authorities to let it fly to southern India, an approval that may pave the way for it to serve more cities in the country, he said.

Tiger Airways is trying to add routes amid intensifying competition on its existing network in Asia, where it is one of at least 18 budget airlines that have started flying in the past four years. India and China are two of the world's fastest-growing major economies and have a combined population of more than 2.4 billion people.

"These are some of the earliest international low-cost airline flights going into the two big markets," said Peter Harbison, executive chairman of the Sydney-based Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, who was visiting Singapore.

"It will be very interesting to see how much traffic they can stimulate, particularly in southern China where there are a lot of social and commercial linkages between Singapore and China."

Shenzhen borders Hong Kong and is one of China's fastest growing cities, and is close to Guangzhou, the capital of South China's Guangdong Province. Haikou is the capital of Hainan, an island-province that is investing heavily in its tourism industry.

(China Daily February 22, 2006)