Bonza Airline Discussion

Simple Flying have posted a lengthy interview with Tim Jordan. Interesting stuff and have to agree with him about the Bruce Highway. Wonder what went wrong for him in India.


cheers skip
 
Related article to the above post

Basically they are aiming for the market of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, Noosa Shire Council, Gympie Regional Council and to a lesser extent the Moreton Bay Regional Council (Caboolture, North Lakes, Redcliffe areas).

Any passengers willing to travel up from BNE (BCC or the councils south) are a bonus, but that's not their primary market.

simpleflying.com

Why Australian Startup Bonza Picked The Sunshine Coast

Bonza's Tim Jordan explains why he picked the Sunshine Coast Airport as the home port for his startup airline.
simpleflying.com simpleflying.com
 
HS-TQE said:
Related article to the above post

Basically they are aiming for the market of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, Noosa Shire Council, Gympie Regional Council and to a lesser extent the Moreton Bay Regional Council (Caboolture, North Lakes, Redcliffe areas).

Any passengers willing to travel up from BNE (BCC or the councils south) are a bonus, but that's not their primary market.

simpleflying.com

Why Australian Startup Bonza Picked The Sunshine Coast

Bonza's Tim Jordan explains why he picked the Sunshine Coast Airport as the home port for his startup airline.
simpleflying.com simpleflying.com
Click to expand...

I think there is a bit of a flaw in this reliance being that Noosa tourists are predominantly $$$ loaded - QF are making a killing on their new routes up there, the MEL route was one of the most successful launches and flexes up to 4 737/717's in peak now a day - from virtually nothing only months ago. I wonder how much ultra budget customer is up there...
 
jakeseven7 said:
I think there is a bit of a flaw in this reliance being that Noosa tourists are predominantly $$$ loaded - QF are making a killing on their new routes up there, the MEL route was one of the most successful launches and flexes up to 4 737/717's in peak now a day - from virtually nothing only months ago. I wonder how much ultra budget customer is up there...
Click to expand...

Yeh, but there’s more than the Sunshine Coast than Noosa. Plenty of other accommodation around. Also it seems a big chunk of their MCY routes are targetted for the 400,000 residents, less so for visitors, of which only 50,000 or so live in Noosa Shire.
 
Indeed, much of the Sunny Coast is below par on the disadvantage scale, and overall it ranks pretty close to the Gold Coast and Brisbane. Right outside MCY is the godforsaken "Pacific Paradise", a counterpoint to Noosa if ever there was one.

cheers skip
 
Last edited:
jakeseven7 said:
I think there is a bit of a flaw in this reliance being that Noosa tourists are predominantly $$$ loaded - QF are making a killing on their new routes up there, the MEL route was one of the most successful launches and flexes up to 4 737/717's in peak now a day - from virtually nothing only months ago. I wonder how much ultra budget customer is up there...
Click to expand...

Currently twice-daily between MEL and MCY.
0.5 QFLink 717 (x3 weekly) and 1.5 QF Mainline 737 (11 weekly).
 
More Bonza news in the AFR today. On page 20 they've got an article with a comment from CASA suggesting that the recent COO departure will not slow down the AOC.

Personally I find it odd that CASA would comment publicly about an in progress application but I guess it shows they are committed to getting the AOC approved in the shortest time possible as they don't want to see Bonza fail. In short if they can pull if off quickly then it's a kick in the gut to Rex who as the article notes took 8 months to amend their AOC.
 
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Two new Bonza routes : Melbourne - Tamworth & Sunshine Coast - Tamworth. Both twice a week. Was going to be an announcement in Tamworth on Tuesday but now less noise owing to crash in China
 
jakeseven7 said:
I think there is a bit of a flaw in this reliance being that Noosa tourists are predominantly $$$ loaded - QF are making a killing on their new routes up there, the MEL route was one of the most successful launches and flexes up to 4 737/717's in peak now a day - from virtually nothing only months ago. I wonder how much ultra budget customer is up there...
Click to expand...
How long does that stick around once the brain scrapes for international disappear and people realise there is a world beyond Australia still...
 
There was an article in The West about Bonza's plans in WA. It was fairly light on detail mentioning that there are negotiations in progress with Perth and other regional airports. Like with the eastern states they are looking at city pairs without existing flights. Also red eye transcontinental flights
 
RB said:
Bit of an article here
Tamworth Lands Bonza Boeing 737 MAX 8 Flights
Click to expand...

One thing I think a lot of people don't account for is the potential willingness of people in regional areas to drive to catch flights (often no choice, or the closer options are price prohibitive).

This article mentions "Away from the big cities, airport catchment areas are physically large and generally thinly settled. Tamworth and the immediate surrounding areas have a population of around 65,000 people." That's basically the population of Tamworth regional city. I'd argue that you'd have to consider the target market being the catchment of 2 hrs drive around Tamworth, which probably expands that to >100,000 (admittedly still not huge). Even Armidale 1.5 hrs away is probably still a target market (for the flights to MEL at least). A couple may be willing to drive to TMW to get some flights that might set them back $400 return instead of flying QF via SYD our of ARM for almost $900 return, and not really be any quicker.
 

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