Bonza airline secures two aircraft to service Whitsundays and Mackay

A direct flight from the Gold Coast to the Whitsundays is finally on the cards after it was plagued with delays. LATEST

Direct flights from the Gold Coast to the Whitsundays are finally back on the cards after the project was plagued with delays. Picture: Contributed

A direct flight from the Gold Coast to the Whitsundays has finally hit the skies after being hit with several setbacks.

This comes after an initial announcement that a direct route from Queensland’s Glitter Strip to the tourism hotspot would kick off at the beginning of the month, however the launch was twice delayed on December 7 and December 12.

But Bonza revealed it had secured two extra planes to cover flights from their Gold Coast base starting today.

Between November 24 and November 28 the budget airline has cancelled 11 out of 110 flights, equating to 10% of Bonza flights in that period.

This left hundreds of people stranded with some forced to shell out thousands to find new flights, such as a Mackay family in Melbourne that had to pay $4000 for last minute flights.

Mackay resident Caitlin Harvey, her partner Chris and two children Kyron and Everlee had a nightmarish journey back to Mackay after their flight was cancelled. Picture: Contributed

The company stated staff shortages, poor weather conditions and the inability to secure new aircraft as the reason why there had been so many cancellations.

Bonza had failed to get approval to fly a leased aircraft from Canada’s Flair airlines, as it needed to get CASA approvals to fly in Australia.

Bonza chief executive officer Tim Jordan said the approval of these new aircraft would guarantee good service delivery in future from the company to its customers.

“We know it’s been a challenging time for some of our customers who were unable to fly and to them we say we’re really sorry and we’ll learn from this and do better to deliver for Australia,” Mr Jordan said.

“Now that we have approval for the two additional aircraft we’re scaling up our operations and servicing our new routes from our Gold Coast base.”

Mr Jordan also said new staff would start training in January on the Gold Coast to service the low-cost carrier’s expansion to 14 destinations around the country.

Bonza announced that there would be 30 per cent off flights to and from the Gold Coast to Whitsunday Coast and Mackay for travel between 19 Dec to 31 Jan to make up for the delays and cancellations customers had to face this year.

“This is our way of acknowledging we could have done better and also shouting from the rooftops that Bonza is back.”