It looks like Bonza are in a bit of strife.
All flights have been cancelled.
Can't book anything on their website.
Bonza signs at check-in have been removed.
Customers are getting refunded in flight credits in $US.
The signs don't look good…
https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/bonza-wiped-fro…
Oh, Bonza, can't you go five seconds without humiliating yourself?
How long was that?
That's rough for people travelling on the day.
Bring back Tiger already. They weren't all that bad.
Lots of people only found after after arriving at the airport this morning.
Ansett, Compass, Tigerair, Air Australia, now Bonza
Ansett
Ansett was raped and pillaged of all their assets of value by AirNZ who bought the company and left only the debts behind…
Some spirit of comradeship:
After Compass 1 and 2 and Branson running away, nobody really believed that from a dodgy app you get the high fare paying passengers.
Back to Greyhound
What about Compass Mark II ?
Not confident this is the complete list: Ansett, East-West, Compass Mk1, Compass Mk2, Impulse, OzJet, Tigerair, Strategic/Air Australia, Bonza
@sumyungguy: Not sure what this list is exactly, but I wasn't impressed with Vigin having no money to pay creditors but being back in business without the debt.
Seems like a crooked system to me.
@SlickMick: List is Australian airlines that have gone bust since 1993. In chronological order: East-West, Compass Mk1 & Mk2, Ansett, Impulse, Ozjet, Air Australia, Tigerair, Bonza
NGL Tiger was the worst of them.
DIssolving the brand was the best thing Virgin could do.
Dunno who downvoted you, you're spot on. Tiger sucked badly. Don't think I ever actually flew with them, they kept cancelling my flights.
my misso had a friend who was visiting Australia for a few months - had two tiger flights cancelled on her last minute, both times she had just rocked up to the airport too after catching a bus, then train. That that was pretty rough..
rubbish way to treat customers.
If I was flying with them, I'd be doing a chargeback ASAP and keeping my fingers crossed…
Flying a dozen people on jets that hold 200 into regional airports on foreign registered aircraft with Canadian pilots is a poor business model.
Was damn handy though. :)
Bugger. Flew with them last month, didn't have problems at all. Failure seems to be a fait acompli for airline startups in this country.
Godspeed
Have you flown with them?
No I'ven't
You realise that if they go under, a lot of people in Philippines will be out of a job… 😔
Ahhhhhhhh…. Discount airlines… Like betting on the greyhounds.
Wonder what the odds were on sports bet or other gambling sites for them lasting 2yrs….
Launched in January 2023 after a lengthy accreditation process during which its planes could not fly, Bonza has struggled with aircraft shortages and was forced to cancel several routes over the past year.
Australia’s newest airline Bonza has been placed in AirlineRatings.com’s Top 25 Low-Cost Airlines in its annual Airline Excellence Awards.
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/bonza-awarded-place-in-t…
and failed.
companies cant keep undercutting each other.. becomes a race to the bottom
Does that mean they are no longer Top 25?
id rather they undercut each other than race each other in price increases
@perfectlydark: That's how they go broke and passengers lose money, like Bonza for example… and others
Everyone wants a bargain… but sadly it costs money to run business' . Companies need to cover costs to survive when they dont cover costs nighty night
First flight in 2023 was 31-Jan, within 4m they entered the top 25. Fatalities, incidents and audit performance were flawless in that time. I'm surprised they didn't rank number one.
incidents and audit performance were flawless in that time.
Maybe it was being compared to Jetstar ?
Was that a branch of productreview?
I didn't even see them before they were gone. I'd heard thier name a couple of times and was quite surprised we had a new airline, but never saw an advertisement, a logo, a plane. But then again, there were a few others in the above lists I never heard of.
Virgin Australia to provide free seats for stranded Bonza passengers
Some passengers were left stranded when Bonza cancelled their domestic flights on Tuesday, announcing services would be “temporarily suspended”.
Now Virgin has stepped up for those who were midway through their journey when their connecting Bonza services were cancelled.
“We will immediately support any passengers stranded mid-journey by offering complimentary seats on Virgin Australia-operated flights to the airport nearest to their final planned Bonza destination,” the company said in a statement.
“For those Bonza guests at an airport, please see a Virgin Australia customer service representative or call our Guest Contact Centre on 13 67 89.“
Good way to fill empty seats and gather a million Brownie points with this free marketing campaign.
Indeed, but all the goodwill in the world wont help much if they don't service the same routes. A lot of people flew Bonza because there were no other choices, obviously there weren't enough of them. Although I wonder why another service doesn't fly the same route using smaller, more affordable aircraft?
"…to the airport nearest to their final planned Bonza destination"
better than nothing…
Bonza chief commercial officer Carly Povey said there were no changes to the airline’s expansion plans despite its planes being diverted to Europe.
This is a more relevant article
https://thewest.com.au/business/aviation/kordamentha-eyes-bo…
Without paywall: https://archive.md/0qini
Australia is a very urbanised society. We don't have the population distribution for a significant regional airline to be viable.
We don't have the population distribution for a significant regional airline to be viabl
Rex seem to be doing OK.
Will be interesting to see what happens long term there. It would, also, be interesting to look at Rex's distribution and type of plane. I'm comparing this to the airlines that fly in Europe where there is significant traffic between regional areas.
The REX Saab fleet average age is 29 years. They have screwed every cent out of those aircraft. It's going to cost them big $$ soon to upgrade their fleet.
Rex fly Saab 340 aircraft on regional routes, with 37 seats and are cheap as chips to operate.
Bonza tried to do the same with 737-8 aircraft which have 186 seats, and are comparatively expensive to operate.
I saw a Bonza 737MAX8 in Port Macquarie once, kinda big even for the airport as we took a QuantasLink Dash 8 lol
Yep, especially after they threatened to cancel essential air routes during COVID, took a bunch of government funding Virgin/Qantas didn't have access to, then immediately announced their expansion into trunk routes using 737s (including some Virgin were shedding). John Sharp seems to have maintained his connections since leaving government.
Bonza👍 ❌ | Gonza👎 ✅
Flew with Bonza once, good experience. Family member has flown to Townsville several times and they said it was a great experience. They're not going to be happy having to drive to Brisbane again.
Was in Melbourne flying out, walked through T4 and it was a shitshow, screaming and shouting in the check in halls.
We all saw this coming, the business model in itself was poor and poorly executed, these aircraft were illegally taken out of service in other countries on other countries issued AOCs in addition to hemorrhaging money across the airline over the past 12 months and now AIP Capital (777partners) are coming back to sell off the aircraft to buy some English Football club.
Melbourne T1 was fine this morning, quiet as per usual but curious to see whats going on in MCY, OOL and AVV.
Bonza is currently in voluntary administration https://www.afr.com/street-talk/hall-chadwick-assess-volunta… and will most likely file for bankruptcy protection in the near future
I would like to mention that the aircraft were being repossessed by its parent company, and will be liquidated on the market to potentially a carrier like Virgin Australia
Maybe Gerry should buy it and flood us with ads?
which will result in high prices and 10% gift card returns.
and it was a shitshow, screaming and shouting in the check in halls.
Reminds of the last time I flew Jetstar.
777 Partners (owners of Bonza) are an extremely dodgy investment company. They have a lot of unpaid debts around the world. Bonza had no chance, unfortunately.
are an extremely dodgy investment company.
So why were they given a license to fly in Australia?
They are a sponsor of Melbourne Victory and in turn they got flares and fire buckets for the airline.
The fact that it took Bonza about a year longer than originally outlined to get their AOC was a red flag from the very start!
@melbourne guy: Not really. It was the first of that type of AOC to be issued since Tiger Airways 16 years ago.
What's more of a red flag is what Bonza's owner has been up to. It's more than likely their shenanigans were part of the shutdown today and our travelling public are paying the price. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/09/29/everton-777…
@Techie4066: That’s true than an AOC of that scale doesn’t get issued very often. I was mainly referring to comments made in October 2021 where Bonza said they would be flying in “Early 2022” lol
these aircraft were illegally taken out of service in other countries
Really? Was this not approved by the lessor or authorities in Canada? Side note, I had family booked on a Flair flight from SFO to YVR in Jan. That route was pretty much cancelled until next peak season, coinciding with the aircraft transfer to Bonza.
Shame
How soon can newspapers use the headline - "Bonza Crashes and Burns"
'Airline Bonza-fire'
'Bonza Goes Down In Flames'
'Bye Bye Bonza'
Bonza not so beauty.
Bonza of the vanities
No longer left wing and, as far as I can tell, no longer at Spencer St.
A little sad on both points. However the Hun can't resist -
@Baysew: Yeah, not a good piece of writing. I watch a bit of Air Crash Investigation series. It makes me a bit more aware of what “crash and burn” really means.
Live updates: Bonza cancels flights across Australia, enters voluntary administration, leaving passengers stranded
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-30/bonza-blog-budget-air…
they should have allowed to book from website, it was only from app wasn't it ?
Yeah, only from app unfortunately. I do agree, website would have been nice
They did enable website bookings a few weeks ago. Too little, too late. Was a utterly stupid business decision to not have this from Day 1.
Bit late unfortunately. Hopefully a major investment company can step in and bring them back
I've flown with Bonza three times and I've been very happy with the airline. Only one flight had a delay of an hour due to a manifest issue which while slightly annoying, I can't complain as I paid less than $200 roundtrip.
Australia desperately needs an airline to cover the routes that Bonza offered. I hope they can make a come back.
They needed to focus on just a handful of underserved regional-regional or city-regional routes that had demand because from what I've read, there were a handful of routes that were decently patronised. They expanded too fast, which meant they spread themselves too thin if anything went wrong (which often it did), causing cancellations with no replacement flight for sometimes days (some routes had only 1 return flight per week). And since the majority of routes had no competition, it meant having to re-book with another airline at high cost whilst also travelling via other airports. Plus there is the whole 777 / Flair garbage fire towards the end.
I think you are probably correct. They needed to start with just a few planes and higher traffic regional places. Build up as demand was proven.
And on top of that, customer service that was hard to come by and didn't follow through. All in all a recipe for disaster when you're trying to create a customer base that would be especially sensitive to disruption/unreliability (in regional areas).
yeah flights are a big screen purchase. app-only was a reasonable concept but not ideal in practice
The Elephant in the Aircraft Hanger is "What does this do to the Virgin Australia IPO?"
On the plus side, at least I can delete the app from my phone.