Grounded Australian carrier Bonza Aviation has formally entered liquidation following a second creditors meeting on 2 July at which liquidators were appointed.
It comes after administrators for the carrier, Hall Chadwick, earlier this month axed all remaining staff when no firm buyer emerged for Bonza.
Bonza, which launched operations at the start of last year using Boeing 737 Max jets, grounded flights and entered administration at the end of April.
”The administration process is designed to maximise the chances of the company or as much as possible of its business continuing in existence; or if this is not possible, to achieve a better result for the company’s creditors than that which would result if the company had been immediately wound up,” Hall Chadwick says.
”Unfortunately, the administrators had not received any offers for the sale of the company business and/or assets at the conclusion of the campaign. The decision to put the company into liquidation now triggers the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG), the [Australian] Federal Government scheme of last resort that provides financial assistance for unpaid employee entitlements in insolvency.”
In a detailed creditor report released on 25 June, Hall Chadwick – noting the airline never made a profit in its brief operating life – said that the funding from 777 Partners was ultimately “not sufficient” to meet Bonza’s accrued debts, forcing the airline to go under.
