Did anyone in this tread have 15 months operating?

Most of us doubted the viability of the airline and its ideas, what we didn’t know was the size of the pockets of its backers, execution was poor from the start which didn’t help. Now let’s see what happens with Rex

Can confirm Min Res intend to pursue in-house aviation services.

Generally speaking, many intend, very few achieve.

Skytrans new owners are probably doing that, based off the fact they’re bringing in a A319 for wet lease ops.
A new AOC is costly and time intensive, especially with the CASA 121 rules and regs that seem to change every 3 months. Just use someone else’s :E

Waiting for Deano69 analysis here, awfully quiet must be planning the come back already.

Also, Australian pollies are useless as tits on a bull. Katter going off blaming Qantas for Bonza demise and screaming the fed gov needs to save it, don’t mention the crappy business plan they had tho. I don’t think Qantas even challenged a route the operated.

Anyone heard anything more on this? There's been no movements for any of the birds so far, its going to be an interesting next few days

Perhaps the thread name should be changed…Bonza has its AOC but no aircraft.

Too soon?

This could be the next episode of cockpit casual.

The Lessors only repossessed. For them it’s not an urgent priority to get a bird out of the country ie no risk to the assets if it remains here for a week or more while arrangements are made and the aircraft is brought back to standard (clear MEL’s etc)

The financial engineering behind this whole place is very complex, but one thing here is important, 777 Partners has very high interest loans tied to Bonza that they cannot get stuck with, which is why it will head to liquidation. They can likely walk away somewhat in tact, assuming some cash remains. I think this was an orchestrated effort between both the lessor and 777, the lessor played the first hand, which then freezes its operations essentially immediately.

The whole Gold Coast fiasco and wet leasing cost blowouts likely pushed its demise forward considerably. It will be interesting to see who is owed cash and how bad it actually got. And the big question, why did Jordan continue on and on if he knew access to cash wasn’t available. The whole paying last months bills with next months revenue can only go on for so long, surely he understood that, he isn’t someone that just walked into the industry. Or perhaps they did know that, and the intention was to just burn it to the ground, which they have done.

Agreed. These aircraft are hot property, given that Boeing 737 production rates have been capped by the FAA whilst Boeing sorts out its own mess. We learnt last week that Boeing's actual production rates are voluntarily lower than the FAA cap. So there are a lot of Max 8 and Max 9 customers mad as hell right now. Not to mention the Max 7 and Max 10 certifications which have been delayed indefinitely, and may never happen. Virgin Australia would be the obvious candidate, with the assets on the VH reg. But who is running that show right now? They seem to be preoccupied with big issues like pet carriage.

Well, for April, their domestic jet ops just closed out easily their worst month of the current FY with some 140,100 pax carried on just over 1,290 flights. For context, April is typically one of the better months in H2.

Domestic jet is probably losing them north of $1 million a week presently, and is on track to lose them somewhere around $55 million this FY.

These guys never stood a chance , once savilles pulled out was never going to work - growth plan was optimistic

To play devils advocate, all the issues surrounding 777 partners and their woes have all just surfaced, we have no idea what the management team at Bonza were being told, cold be that everything was rosy and just hold course and we'll bankroll it. Although it was pretty ominous when the Flair aircraft were taken back.

I tend to agree with 43 inches in that 777 and their team had more to do with ABs demise that Bonza itself
It was always going to need support for the first few years, but I think it likely 777 had other needs for these funds, in particular Everton
They pioneered plenty of new routes with some doing quite well
MEL-PQQ, MCY-TSV, CNS. ABX, NTL just to name a couple,
But along with that a few fails, as to be expected
To be fair most of the routes that did well, likely did well with low fares and are unlikely to succeed at a full fare price point
For example MCY-CNS failed when QQ had a go with high prices, but AB were smashing it
The vacuum AB has left from the Sunny Coast to the north will be very disappointing for us locals as there is a heap of local demand, but not at over $300 per seat

Delusional comments again I see.

Airlines selling point is reliability of a schedule not just price.

note that the lessor pulled the pin after seeing the KM numbers and KM disappeared too

Sure. But Bonza didn’t manage its own cash well. How long was the initial injection meant to last?

The Flair wet lease agreement has likely sent this to the wall a year early, purely because they just burnt whatever cash they had on it. Bizarre decision and clearly nobody ran any numbers on it. Even at full blown loads, I still can’t get it in the green.

Running some average numbers, and what we know in regards to numbers reported to industry, total cost appears to be circa $20m for those two aircraft for the 4 months, which ended up only earning revenue for 2.5 months. It looks like that little project has put a considerable hole in whatever cash they had, considering revenue doesn’t even cover half of that.

I think everyone is underestimating how much this has burnt. I don’t think much forward revenue is even left. 777 Partners has moved on Bonza Management it seems, likely trying to secure whatever revenue remains as it becomes a secured creditor.

Such a brutal industry.

I understand what you mean, my comment wasn't about whether Bonza was managed well or not, it was in regard to what 777 was telling Bonza behind the scenes as far as how much loss they would cover. Therefore it's hard to tell whether Bonza management knew they were in too deep or did 777 just cut the tether and said no more money last week out of the blue. I don't know Jordan or any of the management, but without knowing when the cash actually stopped flowing then it's hard to know who is to blame for it continuing so far.

Considering the lack of assets I reckon there will be very little left after guaranteed staff entitlements are paid, I would not want to be a creditor outside of staff.

It looks like 777 quietly started having funding issues late last year, some alarm bells in October. One would assume Bonza had been asking for further loans in recent months, and obviously knocked back, and advised to start making profits quick smart, which Jordan did allude to a few months ago. 777 stepped in when Flair had its fleet repossessed, and made overnight payments against other aircraft to avoid half the fleet going. Not an option here it seems.

Flair would likely be next. Known offender for late lease payments, with the majority of its fleet connected to the same lessor, seems like they have next to no patience for any late payments let alone a default notice. Likely well over $1b of liabilities over there so that might become problematic, I think many got a fright when the Lynx books recently became public.

You would be correct, the Gold Coast decisions likely made many months before 777 cut them off for any future funding, an obvious unknown at the time. Obvious concerns however how much they would have likely continued to have burnt if they did get access to further funds.