ZEPH Sweep says he wants Bonza to succeed, but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to book with the budget airline again after one of its notorious flight cancellations threw his family’s long-planned and expensive family holiday into chaos.
The Mildura dad, wife Jackie and three children loaded up their car and drove for about 20 hours over two days to get to Queensland last week, following a late-night text on Friday to say their Bonza flight scheduled for the next morning would not be taking off.
Having already booked and paid for their accommodation and activities interstate, and with no alternative flights available, they suddenly had a big problem.
“We’d just got into bed. It was about 11 o’clock and the flight was 10.45am the next day,” Mr Sweep told Sunraysia Daily from Queensland.
“We were up until about one o’clock trying to figure out what to do. We thought about driving to Melbourne and getting a flight from there, but what do we do if they (Bonza) cancel the flight coming back and we’re stuck there?
“As much as we didn’t want to do it, we decided to just jump in the car, so that’s what we did the next morning.”
Mr Sweep said the family’s week-long holiday had been booked, paid for and scheduled.
“All the accommodation at Sea World for two grand, with all the passes to the theme parks. I had hire cars organised, and more accommodation at the Sunshine Coast organised,” he said.
“When they (Bonza) sent the text message saying that everything’s cancelled, it was like, what do we do now? I’m not just going to walk away from all that money.”
The Sweep family’s experience is among many to emerge since the new airline began operations with a small fleet of aircraft.
Its low fares and destinations such as the Sunshine Coast have been extremely popular in Mildura, but rarely a week goes by without a flight cancellation.
Sunraysia Daily recently asked the airline if it was concerned that travellers would abandon it over flight reliability.
Airline chief executive Tim Jordan said that feedback from passengers continued to be “overwhelmingly positive”.
“We will continue to work hard to give Aussies the opportunity to travel in an affordable way so they can get out and about and see their own back yard,” he said.
The Sweep family’s holiday reorganisation eventually cost them more than they had budgeted for, but Mr Sweep said the expense was not what had most disappointed him.
The loss of time had meant they would be unable to catch up with Queensland friends they hadn’t seen in years.
He was also surprised to find the day after the cancellation text that Bonza was still offering tickets on the same flight on its app, so anyone booking that would have also missed out.
“All the plans just got thrown into chaos, so we thought we’ll just salvage what we can,” he said.
“If we didn’t just jump in the car and go, the kids would have been going back to school and I would have lost all the accommodation money.
“I would been out close to three grand if we hadn’t driven up here.
“Because they’re the only airline that does that route, if they cancel at the last minute you’re literally stranded, you’ve got nowhere to go.”
Mr Sweep said he understood that airlines were sometimes forced to cancel, but that Bonza needed to have contingency plans, such as a rescheduled flight the next day.
“I want Bonza to succeed,” he said. “We want cheap flights out of the area to the places we want to go, but I probably won’t book with them again now.
“If you can’t rely on the service, there’s no point in using it.”
The family had been able to make the best of the situation, however, and was enjoying the holiday.
“We’re just not looking forward to the drive home,” Mr Sweep said.
