The TIE Shuttle is not intended for combat, even though it is a varient of the TIE Bomber and TIE Boarder. However, the TIE Shuttle is able to protect its important passengers. This TIE variant is a specialized priority shuttle, which is used to quickly ferry command rank officers, personnel or other priority cargo ship-to-ship and to ground stations. Lower ranking officers ride other shuttles, while higher ranking flag officers usually travel aboard Lambda-class Shuttles.

These shuttles were utilized extensively during the Hoth Campaign to physically shuttle over many non-vital communications between the ships in the Imperial Death Squadron when they were not in hyperspace. The reason for their extensive use during the campaign was with the collected crew of six Star Destroyers, standard comm traffic between them would have interfered with sensor scans and probe droid communications which were so vital to the campaign.

Physically, these shuttles look exactly like the TIE Bomber, except that they lack the targeting sensors which hang below from the TIE Bomber's ordnance pod (in the TIE Shuttle's case, the passenger pod is a modified ordnance pod). The command pod is located on the starboard side, while the port pod contains the passengers (who side one behind the other). There is typically one TIE Shuttle on each ship in a line carrying TIE Fighters.