How to place a JButton at a desired location in a JFrame using Java

Use child.setLocation(0, 0) on the button, and parent.setLayout(null). Instead of using setBounds(...) on the JFrame to size it, consider using just setSize(...) and letting the OS position the frame.

//JPanel
JPanel pnlButton = new JPanel();
//Buttons
JButton btnAddFlight = new JButton("Add Flight");

public Control() {

    //JFrame layout
    this.setLayout(null);

    //JPanel layout
    pnlButton.setLayout(null);

    //Adding to JFrame
    pnlButton.add(btnAddFlight);
    add(pnlButton);

    // postioning
    pnlButton.setLocation(0,0);

Following line should be called before you add your component

pnlButton.setLayout(null);

Above will set your content panel to use absolute layout. This means you'd always have to set your component's bounds explicitly by using setBounds method.

In general I wouldn't recommend using absolute layout.

Define somewhere the consts :

private static final int BUTTON_LOCATION_X = 300;  // location x 
private static final int BUTTON_LOCATION_Y = 50;   // location y 
private static final int BUTTON_SIZE_X = 140;      // size height
private static final int BUTTON_SIZE_Y = 50;       // size width

and then below :

                JButton startButton = new JButton("Click Me To Start!");
                // startButton.setBounds(300, 50,140, 50 );
                startButton.setBounds(BUTTON_LOCATION_X
                                    , BUTTON_LOCATION_Y,
                                      BUTTON_SIZE_X, 
                                      BUTTON_SIZE_Y );
                contentPane.add(startButton);

where contentPane is the Container object that holds the entire frame :

 JFrame frame = new JFrame("Some name goes here");
 Container contentPane = frame.getContentPane();

I hope this helps , works great for me ...