Bonza crew aboard a Boeing 737MAX. Photo / Supplied
Bonza crew aboard a Boeing 737MAX. Photo / Supplied
Bonza co-founder and chief executive Tim Jordan was living by the startup company’s mantra, working in his garage at the back of his Coffs Harbour house as he described how the airline got to lift-off.
The first high-capacity airline to launch in Australia in 15 years, it’s something the travellingpublic hasn’t seen before, he says.
Determinedly Ocker, Bonza’s purple planes are named Shazza, Bazza and Sheila, and if you really want, you can buy a pair of budgie smugglers on board. Purple of course.
Cabin crew “can be themselves”, executives can work at home and its operations base on the Sunshine Coast is a Queenslander house.
“We’re not the same as the other incumbents in the market. They all have their role. They’re good at what they do,” he says.
“But we wanted to be very clear in terms of we’re offering a point of difference in the market.”
But besides having some fun with its planes and product, Bonza is deadly serious about avoiding the fate of other fledgling airlines that have tried, and failed, up against powerful incumbents, Qantas, Virgin Australia and Rex.
Bonza is avoiding flying wing tip to wing tip against them.
“We’ve got 27 routes on sale at the moment and 25 of them are not flown by other airlines,” says Jordan.
This means the airline flies to places like Rockhampton, Townsville, Avalon, Mackay and the Whitsundays with more largely regional destinations coming soon.
“We are very much focused on stimulating the leisure traveller. We are not focused on the business travellers. It’s probably fair to say that just about with one exception, all other incumbents in the market are absolutely focused on the business traveller,” he says.
That allowed Bonza to fly large, brand new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft with 186 seats, which allowed it to deliver lower seat costs, in turn allowing it to set lower fares.
“We are flying markets that the other airlines would not be able to make work based on their cost structures and the way their business model operates,” he says.
“And that’s a very big difference in the marketplace - 90 per cent to 93 per cent of our markets are not flown by other airlines.”
And while other startup airlines falter because backers don’t have deep enough pockets, Bonza is backed by Miami-based US private equity firm 777 Partners. It has diverse interests around the world in sports teams, technology, aircraft leasing and another low-cost carrier that’s growing quickly, Flair Airlines in Canada that is run by ex-Air New Zealand strategy and route chief Stephen Jones.
Jordan has a background in airlines stretching back to the 1990s where he worked in Chicago for United before moving into low-cost carriers in Australia, the Philippines, India and Kazakhstan working for FlyArystan.
Bonza chief executive Tim Jordan. Photo / Supplied
He first started thinking about starting a budget carrier in Australia around 2009 after working in the Philippines and concluding more people there had the chance to travel cheaply than in Australia. The idea bubbled away in the background until 2020 when he was in Kazakhstan during a Covid-19 lockdown and Virgin Australia collapsed into administration.
“Lots of people were declaring an interest in aviation in the Australian market and so my wife (Simone) and I looked to each other and said ‘it’s time for Bonza’, so we headed south, spent a couple of weeks in quarantine and updated the business plan.”
That meant preparing a proposal for 777 Partners and pitching it during the depths of the pandemic. The investment firm’s experience with Flair helped.
“Clearly, there are some demographic and geographic similarities to Canada and Australia. We took Bonza to them, and they quite quickly saw the potential synergies and the opportunity that we represented here,” he said.
Bonza has about 200 staff, nearly all operational crew with a slimmed-down corporate workforce. Jordan’s not prepared to put a figure on the startup costs.
“It’s certainly an industry that has some significant barriers to entry and the financials are clearly just one part of that. The number’s not small.”
The other part is licensing the airline. Regulators had not processed an application from a high-frequency startup for 15 years. And the airline was introducing a new aircraft type, the 737 MAX, which had been grounded overseas for some time because of safety concerns.
“So the process was thorough and appropriate and I’m very pleased to say at the beginning of this year we achieved our air operating certificate.”
The first flight was on January 31, then a pause before the early network flights started. He says there have been a few startup wrinkles but he’s happy with operational performance and demand. The airline promotes itself as the first app-first airline where 95 per cent of bookings had been done on phones. Passengers order food on planes which is delivered to them at their seat when they want as the “food trolley has been banned”.
The big, brand new planes had been head-turners in the small centres they had flown to.
Is there any chance of Bonza heading to New Zealand and putting pressure on overheated airfares across the Tasman?
Not any time soon, is Jordan’s reply. It will concentrate on its home market.
“We need to ensure that we are great and executing well before looking elsewhere. And that’s 100 per cent of our mission at this time.”
