Straight-talking Patrick Hansen, CEO of Europe’s biggest operator Luxaviation, isn’t impressed with recent headlines he’s read about increases in private jet charter requests.

Hansen told Corporate Jet Investor he had become frustrated by such stories in the aviation press and mainstream media, sandwiched in between articles about airlines slashing their flight schedules, and asking their governments for bailouts.

“Of course, we can all see a peak in [short term] demand, but it shows the wrong picture,” he says. “The real picture is not of victory or of a jubilant industry, the real picture is that the industry will be hit so hard by an economic tsunami and that’s what we should be sharing. Yes, there was a few extra flights from the US, but the world is coming to a standstill.”

Hansen’s comments come as Europe, and much of the rest of the world is in lockdown as it tries to stop the spread of coronavirus.

For Hansen, the current crisis will be much worse than any the industry has faced before.

“It is the most difficult operating environment that anybody in our industry has ever seen,” he says. “Over the past 55 years nobody has seen anything like this. The closest thing that anybody can remember is September 11, but that [period of disruption] was much shorter.”

That’s why Hansen isn’t impressed with all the headlines. With the economic tsunami coming, he says that we shouldn’t be reading about how the latest uptick in charter requests is “the best thing since sliced bread”.

“It is stupid to be jubilant for having won a few flights to the US, it is just stupid and we have to be very careful because if we continue all this jubilance we will have a big problem,” he says. “We have to make sure that people understand that this economic tsunami is coming, and its going to hit this industry very, very hard.”

Instead, he says, we should be focussing on how much trouble the industry is facing and points out that his aircraft should be flying right now, but are unable to do so because of all the travel bans in place.

“This industry is as severely stricken as with any other aviation industry. Our aircraft are on the ground, our people are sitting at home. And there is nothing moving,” he says.

Luxaviation Group is one of the largest business aviation operators globally. Despite its size, Hansen says, the industry will soon face severe cash- and capital-flow issues. Not only the cash flow in the industry but how the cash flows through the economy as well.

“I think the big problem is the cash flow, and how that cash flows through the economy. And now everybody is working on the detail to mitigate that cash flow issue,” says Hansen. “So, I would expect that people will be approaching their owners, their banks etc.”

For now, Hansen says that he’s lucky. Unlike other operators the Luxaviation Group’s fleet is spread around that world, so whilst the European fleet is sitting around, aircraft are moving in other parts of the world, although not much.

“More than 90% of my fleet is just sitting around. And I am lucky because I have geographic diversification,” says Hansen. “The European fleet is down, I have two or three repatriation flights, so I could be saying ‘Great I have some seven-hour flights from the US’ but that is a minuscule amount of flights.”