The number of airline skeletons in the Australian airline closet has inevitably increased by another one. A much larger closet is called for.
There are two factors common to almost all those skeletons - being grossly and obscenely undercapitalised and fanciful business plans based on totally fictitious, unachievable traffic projections. Anything to do with the business of aviation is very capital intensive, compounded by a low 25 million population with 70% plus domicile in three or four coastal cities and Australia being a very expensive tourist destination.
And unless an airline has cast iron operating cost guarantees from the aircraft manufacturers (which is most unlikely), forget the manufacturers aircraft operating cost projections, inevitably authored by Aesop himself!
I remember many years ago running into Bryan Grey at Brisbane Airport shortly after he formed Compass. When I asked how business was going, his answer "Loadings are great, load factors over 90%. On current air fares our break even load factor is around 115%". Having known Bryan for many years I was very surprised he didn't see an air fare war looming!
Even in a duopoly airline structure, since the demise of the two airline policy and legislated protection for the players, historically one of the duopoly airlines has always been financially disadvantaged, right back to AN - TN days and up to today's QF - VA.
Spanish philosopher and novelist George Santayana once wrote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat the mistakes (in the future)".
Bonza will not be the last skeleton into the greatly enlarged closet of demised airlines.