Good luck with the 'local' airlines down there---ie summer before last ~ 22 of us(from Louisiana) went to BON---via/thru CUR--& one of the airlines(DA) was not operating ---those(about 6 of us) flying it found out THE AFTERNOON we landed in CUR, to connect on to BON, had already bought & paid for txs etc.....It was really a nitemare.....Wife & I flew Tiara from C. to B. & had a 'pretty' interesting time for our flight(that's another story I guess---I've documented that on a earlier previous post)........Let's just say---a place I'll NEVER go back to, other/better places to spend my time & money worrying over..........
EDIT:-------do remember about 4 of our group flew direct from Atlanta to BON, with NO trouble------lol, that's what I'd do--ie the other 18 of us all had 'war stories' to tell about...
Sorry to read about your flight problems with DAE. But I don't think it's fair to use your particular experience as a reference point for typical regional Dutch Caribbean airline operation and/or airport connection time. Insel struggles with frequent delayed, cancelled, and rescheduled flights that often lead to passenger and baggage backlog until they catch up again. Execution of operations is somewhat unreliable but they do ultimately get people to their destinations. (Thus the local moniker "Insult Airlines".)
But DAE, the airline you flew, was in the midst of financial crisis in summer 2013. This eventually led to Curacao airport grounding all of DAE's planes in August 2013. Your August 17 trip through CUR was the day that CUR airport first prevented DAE from using check-in services. It was also the day that DAE first admitted that services to Bonaire had been cancelled due to their financial problems.
DAE was subsequently declared bankrupt in September 2013 and is no longer in operation.
More details here if interested. The timing of all this was bad luck for you, no doubt about that.
We've found our way to Bonaire via a lot of airlines over the years (United, ALM Antillean Airlines, Air Jamaica, Delta, and Insel) and made stops or connections on several islands (Jamaica, Haiti, Aruba, and Curacao.) We've never been delayed more than a couple of hours going either direction and have never missed a flight. It might happen someday, but I'm a firm believer that the trick is to book a reasonable itinerary that's amenable to the characteristics of Caribbean airline and airport operation. The lowest risk and most convenient is obviously a direct flight from the USA on Delta or United. Adding connections on other islands adds risk. Adding short connections adds additional risk. Flying with a financially troubled airline adds risk.
Once again I'm sorry to read of your adamant vow to never return to Bonaire. Different strokes for different folks I guess. We just returned from another lovely 3 week trip over the Christmas holidays where we enjoyed almost 40 hours of self-guided shore diving bottom time. No boats, no groups, no hassle... just the two of us and 60+ dive sites accessible from shore. I can't imagine anywhere else in the Caribbean where we could do that.