Jetstar looking at Toowoomba

[Saab34]

Talks are underway apparently. Melbourne only.

Bonza had around 60% loads on the Melbourne run, however JQ has better reach so I think would crack that 80% mark.

Bundaberg-Melbourne was often another Bonza success story. Hoping they might look at this one also.

Link Here

 

[Mattg]

Makes perfect sense for JQ to use Bonza's experiment as free market research, and add service on the routes that actually worked!

 

[henrus]

I wouldn't be surprised if WTB is offering them a good discount, they don't have a lot of traffic out there right now!

Pre covid they had Air North links to both Melbourne and Townsville plus an often double daily service on Qantas Dash 8 to SYD. During covid the Air North flights basically ended and Qantas has now dropped to just 4x per week plus the odd Rex milk run (and a lot of very light aircraft apart of the training school).

Bonza tried WTB to PPP for about 6 months and towards the end it was just MEL and TSV both of which only existed for 12 months before the collapse.

Cathay has run a weekly 747 freighter for a while now and during the height covid they also had a few more freight flights with SQ running some A350s under the same flight number usually used for BNE passenger flights.

 

[markis10]

Talks are underway apparently. Melbourne only.

Bonza had around 60% loads on the Melbourne run, however JQ has better reach so I think would crack that 80% mark.

Bundaberg-Melbourne was often another Bonza success story. Hoping they might look at this one also.

Link Here

Bonza and success story is an Oxymoron. Loads are one thing, yields another. Wellcamp doesn’t have the population base to support sustainable operations to most destinations.

 

[HS-TQE]

It's a good thing for loads, the question would've been yields on MEL-WTB for Bonza and whether if the majority of the fares were sold at very low yields (well below cost).

 

[markis10]

It's a good thing for loads, the question would've been yields on MEL-WTB for Bonza and whether if the majority of the fares were sold at very low yields (well below cost).

Bonza dug a big hole for themselves operating flight with 50-75% loads of sub $100 fares, the cities they served made sense with 75 seats or less aircraft, and we have been there before with air Australia, Jetgo…..

 

[dajop]

IIRC, the only routes that seemed have fares regularly selling well above the $100 market were MEL/BDB (and maybe GLT?) and ABX/MCY (forgetting the OOL routes as they were a fustercluck). It was madness to have 180 seat planes. Sure, the aircraft had low cost per seat km, but that's no good if you can only fill half the plane. ( Interesting aside that another LCC, Scoot has recently introduced a smaller jet to serve smaller demand markets ex-SIN).

It could be argued that Jetstar might have a better chance of making a small number of routes work due to brand recognition, QFF linkage and confidence they'll still be around by the end of the year.

 

[Saab34]

I don’t know how the Bonza yield strategy worked but it seemed to be at odds with the competitors/what the market was doing. I think the app had been a big problem also.

I flew some MCY-MEL flights for $79 last minute on Bonza. The other three had fares above $400 with all seat maps full.

I think you will find the others will have better penetration on some of these Bonza routes, like MCY-CNS. Having a website helps for a start. There is an extra 10-20% traffic right there.

It would be good to see Virgin back in Albury, I can’t see why a 737 daily wouldn’t work to SEQ.

 

[markis10]

Good point, their method of selling was painful to begin with, factor in many of their routes didn’t allow weekends away timetable wise, they were always on a hiding to nothing

 

[Saab34]

Good point, their method of selling was painful to begin with, factor in many of their routes didn’t allow weekends away timetable wise, they were always on a hiding to nothing

The app only approach no doubt contributed to the demise. They caved in and introduced a website a month prior to collapse.

I doubt a website would have saved them though. The house well was on fire by that point.