Cruising Altitude

In the world of high-end business jets, technology remains key to survival.

- Denise Kok

Half an hour into our interview, Jean-Michel Jacob excuses himself. “I have to go. I’m sorry.”

As Jacob prepares to receive VIP clients, his public relations minder chimes in with an apology, offering to take down the rest of my questions and field them when he is in between meetings.

It is unusual for a Frenchman to ditch formalities and bow out prematurely from a media interview, but the President of Dassault Aviation Asia-Pacific has bigger headwinds to battle than a slew of questions from this journalist.

Here is a man who navigated the French aerospace giant through three decades of Bulls and Bears, past the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the Great Recession of 2008. But nothing prepared him – or the world for that matter – for Covid-19, which was just beginning to curl its invisible grip around the aviation industry when we met.

The Peak met with Jacob in February at the Singapore Airshow, a fortnight after China scrambled to contain the virus multiplying in its backyard. Scientists knew little about its origins, methods of transmission or suite of symptoms at the time, but none of that mattered. Covid-19 had already landed here.

As headlines around the world lit up with news of Singapore’s rising infection rates – then second only to that of China’s – the city-state’s reputation went from that of a global travel hub to one as a virus hotspot. Seventy exhibitors pulled out of the air show before its gates even opened on the first day.