On board Bonza's first flight: New budget airline takes off

Passengers board the first Bonza flight on the Sunshine Coast on Tuesday morning.

Australians gazing skyward may catch the odd flying purple "thumbs-up" from Tuesday.

Bonza, the first new carrier to launch in Australia in 16 years, has taken to the skies for its first passenger flight, just four days after opening up bookings to the public.

Traveller was onboard flight AB777 to get a taste of what's in store for passengers of Australia's newest low-cost airline.

Bonza's first flight departed from Sunshine Coast Airport on January 31, 2023.

The carrier's Sunshine Coast to Whitsundays flight took off slightly behind schedule at 8.30am on Tuesday morning, with passengers boarding the plane named "Bazza", one of three new Boeing 737-MAX 8s that make up the airline's fleet. The Sunshine Coast-based carrier is the first to operate 737-MAX 8s in Australia.

Bonza will fly three Sunshine Coast-Whitsunday Coast services per week. The Tuesday service is the first of 27 new domestic routes to 17 destinations set to roll out in coming months – 26 of which are not currently serviced by any other airlines.

It is the first new airline to launch in Australia since the now-defunct Tigerair in 2007, which shut down due to the pandemic.

The airline has been open about cutting back on things like frequent flyer programs, business class seats and complimentary refreshments, all in the name of keeping costs low.

When we arrive at Sunshine Coast Airport check-in is swift and crowd-free – while this is a public flight with real customers, a significant portion of today's passengers are media and commercial partners, and they've arrived early, forming a growing media scrum at the departure gate.

Once onboard, we find the purple seats each come equipped with USB ports and a power socket at our feet. Big tick.

"I love the 'new' smell," my seat neighbour remarks. She's right. It has that new car smell. Everything is pristinely new, I'm likely the first person ever to sit in this seat — the safety instruction cards are freshly laminated, not dog-eared and grimy.

The airline has done away with seatback screens and entertainment libraries in favour of an all-in-one app – a seatback QR code produces instructions to get online. There is only one class on the plane - economy - with seats offering a pitch (legroom) of 29 inches (74 centimetres - the same as Jetstar's Airbus A320s, but an inch smaller than Qantas and Virgin Australia's 737s) and a width of 17.2 inches (44 centimetres).

Once connected to the onboard WiFi, you can access the Bonza entertainment system – a simple, if slim, catalogue of podcasts, audio series and online self-improvement video workshops (one, for example, is a David Bach series titled Start Late Finish Rich – a curious choice for the budget airline). You can also order inflight meals, drinks, snacks and purple Bonza Budgie Smugglers (oh, yes).

Once in the air, I ambitiously order the "Big Breakie" for $16.50 (ham and cheese croissant, muffin and a drink), one of a handful of onboard meal combos. The app gives the option to set up a payment account, use pre-purchased Bonza dollars, or pay the staff directly with a physical card. The latter seems easiest so I select that.

The entire menu is Australian and where possible, locally sourced, from the craft brews by Sunshine Coast Good Mates to the ham and cheese croissant in the breakfast combo by south-east Queensland company The Handmade Food Co. Single-use plastic is banished – drinks are served in reusable purple cups.

Unfortunately, I'm not the only one keen to road test the inflight menu and it's only an hour and a half flight. A 'Bonza legend' (what the airline calls the cabin crew) stops by to break the bad news: they're not going to have time to serve me (later, the same flight attendant spots me before disembarkation and slips me a ham and cheese croissant, free of charge, bless her).

The airline's first seats went on sale on Friday, January 27, with flights to Port Macquarie and Rockhampton starting from $49 one-way.

Bonza has already sold more than 10,000 seats since bookings opened, according to the airline.

It is currently offering bookings for 15 routes to 12 destinations, with travel dates up to late October 2023. Bookings can only be made through the airline's app or through registered travel agents.

The low-cost regional service comes amid soaring domestic airfares caused by reduced capacity and rising jet fuel costs.

Bonza will focus on regional desinations – with the exception of Avalon, Melbourne. The first round of routes includes Mackay, Albury, Cairns, Coffs Harbour, Mildura, Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Rockhampton, and Townsville.

The airline will later add a number of new routes to destinations including Bundaberg, Gladstone, Tamworth and Toowoomba.

Melbourne Airport is the only major Australian airport to partner with Bonza; Sydney is a work-in-progress, we're told earlier.

Melbourne-based travellers will be able to fly direct to Bundaberg, Gladstone, Mackay, Port Macquarie, Rockhampton, Sunshine Coast, Tamworth, Toowoomba, Townsville and Sunshine Coast.

The budget airline's long-delayed launch comes after receiving regulatory approval by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) on January 12.

The writer travelled as a guest of Bonza.