Iron Maiden to Fly its Own Jumbo Jet on World Tour
After Iron Maiden releases its new album The Book of Souls on September 4, the band will be taking the 
album around the world in a 747-400 jumbo jet. And get this, it will be flown by vocalist Bruce Dickinson, who is already a pilot, but is currently in training to gain his license for this massive aircraft.
This version of the Ed Force One will be capable of carrying members of Iron Maiden, its crew, along with more than 12 tons of equipment – sounds hefty.
While the full list of dates for The Book of Souls tour has yet to be outlined, we do know that it’ll begin February 2016 in the US, before reaching six continents and 35 countries overall.
Here’s what Dickinson had to say about manning the airship: “When the opportunity arose from my friends at Air Atlanta Icelandic to lease a 747 for The Book of Souls World tour, of course we jumped at the chance, who wouldn’t? The greatest benefit of travelling in a 747 is that because of its colossal size and freight capacity we can carry our stage production and all our stage equipment and desks in the cargo hold without having to make any of the immense structural modifications needed to do this on the previous 757, the extent of which fans will have noted on the Flight 666 DVD. Although in reality we cannot carry much more gear the savings in complexity, time and cost make using the 747 even more practical. All we will need to do is “paint” it and move a few seats around, with the added advantage that there is much more room for band and crew – our Krew can almost get a row of seats each to catch up on sleep on the flights! Furthermore, it is marginally faster 0.85 MACH and the range of around 7000NM (13,000 km) is much greater which means we will not have to make the refuelling stops we needed to with the 757.
“However, even though we have worked out the logistics of taking a plane of that immense size out on tour, I still have to learn to fly it before we can go anywhere! So, I’m currently doing my training to qualify as a pilot and Captain on a Boeing 747. I’m doing this at Cardiff Aviation, my aircraft maintenance facility in Wales, where we recently took possession of a rather splendid 747 simulator which I can’t wait to get practising on!
“We’re all really excited at the thought of bringing our brand new tour to fans who have never seen us play live before, and of course re-visiting all our old friends again too. You can rest assured we are all working hard to put together a spectacular show for our fans.”
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