Bonza CEO says low-cost airline will cater for regional areas that are not serviced

A new Queensland-based regional airline is set to take off with five planes in the middle of this year, with the promise of 27 routes between 17 destinations and average fares of $100 or less.

Bonza aims to bring `commonsense’ to Australian aviation.

Standing on his veranda in Coffs Harbour and watching the planes fly over, it was not the noise that bothered Tim Jordan.

It was the injustice that regional Australia had copped a raw deal when it came to access to low-cost airfares.

That was in 2009 when Mr Jordan returned with his family from a successful stint as CCO with Cebu Pacific in the Philippines.

It was then the Bonza founder and chief executive had the idea of creating new a low-cost carrier to exclusively cater for the regional Australia’s leisure travel needs.

“My interest in the low-cost model was piqued when I worked for Cebu Pacific which was the first low-cost airline in Asia,” he said.

“When I came home and was standing on the veranda in Coffs Harbour, and I was seeing QantasLink aircraft and various others fly over the top of my house. It didn’t sit right with me. In regional Australia people on average get paid less and yet they pay far more for air travel. That’s a mismatch.

“From that point onwards the opportunity changed in shape and size and eventually morphed into what we see today in terms of Bonza. We chose that name because we wanted it to reflect something profoundly regional and proudly Australian.”

Bonza CEO Tim Jordan has more than 25 years experience in the aviation sector.

In October last year Mr Jordan, 53, revealed his planned budget regional airline backed by

US-based private alternative investment firm 777 Partners which has around $US6bn ($8.43bn) in assets.

Over the next few months it was revealed Bonza will operate 27 routes between 17 destinations with an initial five planes with takeoff earmarked for the middle of the year once the regulatory process is finalised.

Two of the aircraft and a spare will be based on the Sunshine Coast at the airline’s headquarters, to be known as the Bonza Backyard, and another two in Melbourne.

Routes will include Rockhampton to Cairns, Townsville, the Sunshine Coast and Melbourne; the Whitsunday Coast to Newcastle, Toowoomba and the Sunshine Coast; and Melbourne to Bundaberg, Gladstone, Mackay and Mildura and fares are expected to be around half the price, with an average fare of $100 or less.

Bonza has also launched a recruitment drive for up to 200 pilots, cabin staff and support workers.

Bonza is aiming for takeoff around the middle of the year.

Mr Jordan’s journey from where he grew up near Brighton in England to Australia and then establish Bonza was one in which has he clocked up plenty of kilometres.

His first job in aviation was with Novair which he joined in 1989 when he was 20. With a background in accountancy he was consulting in London and itching to get back in the aviation game when the events on September 11, 2021 occurred and changed the world.

It also led him to Australia.

“On that morning I’d given up my consulting role and had lined up to talk to a couple of airlines but world events happened and for the rest of the day I thought I wouldn’t be working in the industry for sometime,” Mr Jordan said.

“But I got a call from Virgin Blue who said would you be interested in coming to Australia. I ended up here in late 2001 thinking I’d have a few months of paid work and that would be it. But the opportunity became bigger and more interesting so I joined Virgin Blue in 2002.”

Bonza is getting ready for takeoff.

He was head of commercial distribution for Virgin Blue where he oversaw the successful commercial growth of the airline from 15 to 48 aircraft. He then joined Cebu Pacific and helped them attain some of the highest profit margins in the world.

When he and his family arrived back in Australia and his wife Simone studied teaching and he became a house husband looking after his son and started thinking about what eventually became Bonza.

He later worked for Go Air in India and was the managing director of FlyArystan in Kazakhstan before return home in 2020 after Covid hit and started working on his dream airline in earnest and approached 777 Partners who owned a significant share of Canada’s independent low-cost operator Flair Airlines.

Mr Jordan said what he wanted to achieve with Bonza was not complicated but “commonsense” for a country that was in the top 15 largest domestic airline markets in the world but the only one without an independent low-cost carrier.

“It’s nonsensical that people living in regional Australia who want a short-break have to fly twice to get to their holiday destination, pay hundreds of dollars or sit in their car for hours,” he said.

“We are a commonsense airline representing large regional centres and tourism markets. It’s not new. This model is already deployed elsewhere in the world.

“I have seen first hand the impact of low airfares on regional areas and how they stimulate tourism markets that people didn’t think were there.”