In the 12 months ended March 31 last year, Tiger Airways reported a loss of just $14.3 million - a marked improvement over the $37.4 million that went down the drain a year earlier.

Total turnover was $171.2 million, an almost 130 per cent jump over the $75 million in 2006.

Orangestar, which owns and operates both Jetstar Asia and Valuair, has yet to submit its latest financial results to the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority.

The company, which lost $47.5 million in 2006, is expected to report over the next few days that like Tiger, it too lost just over $14 million last year.

Jetstar's chief executive officer, Ms Chong Phit Lian, told The Straits Times: 'Our performance last year was much better compared to 2006, and we are confident that we are on track to making a full-year profit before March 2009.'

Tiger is in a strong position to end this financial year in the black, said chief executive officer Tony Davis.

He told The Straits Times: 'We made it clear that the company is in the very early stages of its development...It is in an aggressive growth stage.'

The company, which launched an Australian domestic carrier based in Melbourne last year, is enjoying brisk business Down Under, while its Singapore operations were profitable for the first nine months of the current financial year.

Tiger, which will have a fleet of 70 Airbus A-320 planes by 2016 - a huge jump from 12 today - has big plans for further expansion.

Later this year, Incheon Tiger Airways, a joint venture between the airline and South Korea's Incheon city government, is expected to take off.

Tiger will own 49 per cent of the new company.

The future looks bright for low-cost carriers in Asia that are expected to benefit from the wave of liberalisation that has swept across the region.

Just last Friday, both Tiger and Jetstar, as well as Malaysia's AirAsia, started plying the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur route, breaking more than 30 years of dominance by Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines.

For now, the Singapore carriers have just one flight each day but by December, all barriers will be lifted to allow them to fly as many times as they want not just to Kuala Lumpur, but to all the other Asean capital cities as well.

The eventual plan is for Asean to operate as a Single Aviation Market by 2015, so airlines will be free to criss-cross the skies with no restrictions at all.