Sunshine Coast Airport will be the biggest winner when Bonza Airlines launches low-cost domestic flights in mid-2022.
This week, Bonza revealed the 25 point-to-point routes to and from 16 Australian airports that the airline will serve using its initial fleet of five Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets. Bonza’s route map will be further expanded when an additional three jets arrive later this year.
All of Bonza’s announced routes are within Queensland, NSW and Victoria, and regional locations feature heavily on the low-cost carrier’s route map. Here’s the full map of Bonza’s 25 new routes:
Bonza’s head office will be located at Sunshine Coast Airport, and the carrier will base two planes each at Sunshine Coast Airport and Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport, where it will operate from Terminal 4. The airline’s fifth aircraft will be used as an operational spare to ensure reliability and on-time performance can be maintained.
“Since announcing Bonza to the world late last year, we’ve always said we wouldn’t just fly between Australia’s three largest cities and instead give people in the regions more choice. Today we deliver on that promise, with the largest launch announcement in Australian aviation history,” Bonza CEO Tim Jordan said.
“With destinations ranging from Albury to the Whitsundays, travellers will now be able to fly, instead of impossibly long road trips as well as fly direct without a stopover in a major city. Aussies can look forward to enjoying more time at their destination and spending less of their hard earned cash getting there in the first place.”
Mr Jordan told the AFF on Air podcast last year that Bonza is not seeking to compete head-on with Australia’s established domestic airlines. Instead, it wants to stimulate demand on unserved leisure and regional routes where there is currently little or no competition. Most of Bonza’s routes are not currently served by other airlines, or only by full-service airlines.
Some have questioned whether Bonza will be able to fill Boeing 737 MAX aircraft with 186 seats on more niche routes like Coffs Harbour-Sunshine Coast or Melbourne-Bundaberg. But with only 2-4 weekly return services on most routes and affordable airfares, they hope to stimulate demand and encourage people to fly who otherwise would drive or not travel at all.
Bonza is not targeting business travellers. It will also avoid some of the same mistakes that Rex made when it attempted to launch Sydney-Melbourne jet services last year with nine daily flights in each direction. That was too much capacity, and also not operationally sustainable as Rex only had three Boeing 737 aircraft in its fleet at the time.
Passengers flying Bonza can also expect a paperless experience, with the airline promising that customers will be able to check in, manage their bookings and access the airline’s onboard retail offering – which will include Bonza-branded budgie smugglers – through the “Fly Bonza” smartphone app.
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