Bonza suspends flights across Australia as budget airline reviews business 'viability' | ABC News

let's go to Steph area who's at Melbourne Airport where we understand several flights spons of flights have been cancelled Steph good morning lots of Travelers thrown into their plans thrown into disarray any sign of people who were hoping to fly bonser today good morning Michael yes I'm here where normally you would have the bons are check in as you can see behind me at the moment it just says Melbourne Airport so the signage has been removed at this stage from the electronic screen and know that there are three flights rockampton gladston uh and also up north in Queensland they those three flights that were due to land today here at Melbourne have all been cancelled I haven't had a chance to speak to too many people down here at the moment just a couple of other staff that are working for wrecks nearby and they say obviously this is normally where they would be uh however that normally only get here about 90 or so minutes before checkin that they would actually open up these counties but obviously a huge blow to so many passengers whose travel plans would be thrown into disarray as we heard from Keith Tomkin there just a little while ago uh we have already heard that this means that we are seeing all of those flights cancelled according to the CEO of bonsa today uh sarily cancelled with no notice as the company looks to negotiations and discussions on about its ongoing viability but they have obviously a apologized to those customers saying that they are very sorry for the inconvenience caused of course bonser came onto the scene and burst onto the scene from January 31st last year promising to be opening up uh flights across Australia clearly at the moment that is not happening with all of these flight cancellations they did say that they were trying to get into those markets that were unserved and underserved so they had three of those major hubs with at least 6 uh different destinations operating with what they claimed were the newest uh airplanes that were out there uh better fuel efficiency uh however obviously this is now a big question mark as to what's going to happen with bonso big question mark indeed Steph really appreciate the up there from update there from Melbourne Airport let's bring you again what we know this is a statement directly from the company bonser airlin says it has temporarily suspended Services due to be operated today as discussions are currently underway way regarding the ongoing viability of the business the chief executive Tim Jordan says he apologizes to our customers who are impacted by this and we are working as quickly as possible to determine a way forward that ensures there is ongoing competition in the Australian domestic Aviation Market we'll speak shortly to Aviation analyst Keith tonken yeah let's do that right now actually uh Keith good morning to you good morning uh pretty shocking news on one hand but others uh had said that perhaps this was on the cards given just how the airline had been established what its Ambitions were and the challenges it had already faced well that's right the the model for the the airline was to service routes that weren't serviced by those other Mainline operators of Virgin and quantis and and more recently wrex and there was some discussion during that process that they might find it difficult to make a on those routs simply because they had relatively thin margins and there have been some other difficulties in financing the aircraft and seemingly here we are now with those detractors proven right yeah look it's interesting that um running the show is a former virgin blue boss uh Tim Jordan he knows the industry he knows what he would have been getting into um that funding did come in from uh overseas as well to try and get it up and going they did want to move away from Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane so does it really just show that this country time and time again has proven that the airline system as it is now just cannot be broken into by the small players well the bonsa model was to service those more marginal routes and that was part of reducing the cost base to make it feasible for travelers to travel to those destinations and they certainly drew a faithful following and I'm not sure it's true to say that other airlines aren't able to break into what was a pretty strong duopoly between virgin and Quantas with Rex now servicing Mainline routes Melbourne Sydney Brisbane Adelaide and others so there's definitely where there's a will there is a way but Bon's model has seemingly proven to be difficult to sustain it could have been something to do with the timing as well we've had a terrible rise in the cost of living over the the last year or two uh I know that bonser as well was suggesting that the pilot shortage that is being seen across many of the airlines was having a big impact on them well the cost of living is certainly a consideration uh but we are seeing that passenger numbers domestically and internationally are rising back to where they were preco and there's strong demand ongoing uh that are still being serviced and the shortages of Staff including the pilots and the maintenance engineers to some extent is resolving so they they started in the most difficult of circumstances and things are probably looking up better than they were at the start of their their operation uh they the announcement from uh Tim Jordan was that they were uh suspending these flights as they looked at alternative ways whether they could go forward do you think at this point knowing what you know and of course we don't see the books we don't have everything before us can they be saved that's difficult to know at the moment because we don't really have good insight into the situation for them financially although they have been having difficulties in sourcing and paying for aircraft with some of the the providers recently withdrawing aircraft availability including Naro Airlines and and their parent company so there are some difficulties in the background and uh if we don't have enough passengers on airplanes perhaps that was the the issue that brought them to a stop we're not really sure and we're looking forward to finding out some more information yeah Keith final comment uh a anything for customers this morning who'll be watching all this and wondering just what the heck they should be doing yeah that's very difficult and I best they can do is to wait and find out what the the company provides in terms of the followup from here all right Keith tonan Aviation expert come coming to us live on this breaking news from Brisbane thank you thanks for

Channel: ABC News (Australia)

Views: 22,030

Keywords: Australia, abc, abc news, news, bonza, qantas, rex, virgin airlines, flight cancellations, flight cancelled, aviation, aviation expert, keith tonkin, bonza cancels, bonza liquidation, bonza insolvency, bonza airline, bonza tickets, bonza planes, bonza flights, bonza launch, flight tickets, flight costs, airfares, australian airfares, australian air travel, australian aviation market, bnza, regional flights, regional travel, flights suspended

Id: DWhzibRofZY

Length: 7min 13sec (433 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024