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Artist News Gigs & Festivals
Bruce Dickinson to upgrade his plane for next Iron Maiden tour
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 26 August 2015
Lots of bands will say that their next tour is going to be bigger and better than their last one, but few mean that their frontman is planning on piloting an even bigger plane next time they tour the world.
But Bruce Dickinson is currently in training for a licence to fly his band, crew and twelve tons of kit to six continents in a Boeing 747-400 next year. And while Iron Maiden frontman and keen pilot Dickinson has flown his band around the world before, please note that this plane is “almost twice the size and over three times the weight of the Boeing 757 used on previous tours”.
Although the aeroplane that will get them there has been confirmed, a full schedule for the band’s The Book Of Souls World Tour is still TBC, though it will kick off in the US next February, and will cover most of the globe, including the Maiden’s first ever shows in China.
Says Dickinson: “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”. Did you note it? Well, watch more carefully next time.
The tour will promote the band’s sixteenth studio album, ‘The Book Of Souls’, which is out next week.
