I have the same problem and get it fixed with typings, since tsd is deprecated.
DEPRECATED: TSD is deprecated, please use Typings and see this issue for more information.
The key is to use:
$ typings install cordova --ambient --save
$ typings install cordova/plugins/statusbar --ambient --save
Please reference my other post in this forum for detail.
With typings, I don’t need to reference /// <reference path="Cordova.d.ts"/> on the top of *.ts files. The transpile won’t give any errors, and I got the nice intellisence with Visual Code as well.
I am using the latest ionic 2 and cordova 6.x.