Like most people, I am really disappointed in the browsing experience on my iPad Air due to aggressive tab reloading.
Anyway, I don't know if this has been posted already, a quick search didn't bring up anything, but please try this:
Go to Settings->Safari->Advanced-> set JavaScript OFF
After disabling JavaScript I can easily keep open seven pages from The Verge. Probably more, didn't bother to try. No reloads at all. I think I even played some game, came back, and everything was still there, no reloads!
I also tried opening three Big Picture pages at the same time (closed those The Verge pages). Again, no problems whatsoever. Normally, with JavaScript on my Air can barely load ONE Big Picture page.
Yeah, there is one huge problem in this "solution". Modern web relies heavily on JavaScript so lots of sites will not work correctly or practically at all
In any case, it seems that the JavaScript engine in Safari is a memory hog, or something in the way it is used causes these problems. So, there is some hope that this can be improved in future OS updates, assuming Apple does care. According to some, also on this forum, it is better on latest 7.1 betas, but I personally don't have access to those. Let's hope so.
(Still, putting just 1GB of RAM into a market leading premium tablet is just greedy and not very forward looking, from consumer's point of view...)