I have been trying to incorperate sqlite into a simple Ionic app and this is the process I have been following:
ionic start myApp sidemenu
So Turns out that it is because Cordova is platform specific and doesn't work when you run ionic serve
I was able to run the same code on an android device with out issue when I built and deployed.
you can replace the cordova plugin with window to use the websql databases
so instead of sqlitePlugin.openDatabase() you can use window.openDatabase()