Bruce - The Pilot
Bruce Dickinson, who got his commercial pilot’s license in the 1990s, is hitting new heights in his second career as a commercial airline pilot.
British charter airline Astraeus confirmed that Dickinson, serves as first officer on Boeing 737s flying between Great Britain and holiday destinations in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
“It’s a great job. Nothing else compares.” said Bruce.
“We have had Iron Maiden fans on board who, when they heard my name announced as first officer, asked the hostesses if it was the rock star.” said Bruce.
On this page you will be able to read several articles related to Bruce’s second passion in life: Flying.
IRON MAIDEN Frontman Flying High - Aug. 11, 2003
One of the greatest things about being a rock star is never having to work another day in your life, right?
So why, you might ask, would a rocker as financially secure as Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, the singer of a band that is still selling out Madison Square Garden some 20 years down the line, want to go out and work a J-O-B?
Well, because it’s a job that parallels his love for singing and performing.
When he’s not on the road or in the studio with Maiden, Dickinson spends a good chunk of his year piloting 150-seat Boeing 737s for Astraeus Airlines in London.
A first officer for Astraeus and a pilot for some 11 years, Dickinson logged between 600 and 700 hours in the air for the company last year, regularly jetting back and forth from London to such locales as Egypt, Iceland and the former Soviet Union.
During Maiden’s recent tours, he’s even flown himself and several band members from gig to gig in a Cessna 421 Golden Eagle, a seven-seat propeller plane.
Dickinson, whose first commercial job was with British World (an independent airline that folded after Sept. 11, 2001), equates discovering his love for flying to finding another woman. When he’s flying, his wife often remarks, ” ‘Oh, he’s off sleeping with the tin bitch again,”‘ he relays with a laugh.
He adds that he’s constantly humbled by flying.
“When you’re up at 41,000 feet at night, flying in the middle of Europe and you look down and you can see all these lights, and then you look up and you see more stars than you’ve ever seen before in your life, it’s just amazing,” he says. “You see the weather, you see thunder storms from hundreds of miles away. I get to see the best light show in the world.”
Becoming a commercial airline pilot was the fulfillment of a childhood dream for the metal icon.
As a child, Dickinson was often taken to air shows by a relative who had served as an electrician on World War II bombers, and his uncle served in England’s Royal Air Force.
“I toyed with the idea of joining the air cadets at school,” he says. “But I thought, ‘Ah, they’d never let me fly,’ because I was terrible at math and physics. ‘Too stupid; they wouldn’t be interested.”‘
His interest picked up in the mid-’80s, after Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain got his pilot’s license.
While Dickinson tagged along on a few of McBrain’s flights, it wasn’t until 1992, when he was on vacation with his family, that he spotted a sign at a Florida airport advertising flying lessons for $35, that things changed.
He was sold as soon as the bird took flight. Dickinson then set out collecting the proper licenses for U.S. and European flights.
“In ‘93, when I left Iron Maiden for six years and embarked on a solo career, it did strike me that if the solo career didn’t work out, I was going to be jobless,” he says. “So I decided that I would go and do the airline pilot exams in Europe.”
Although the band is going strong, its new album, “Dance of Death” (Columbia), arrives Sept. 9, the singer foresees a time when he’ll be flying exclusively.
“When it gets to when Iron Maiden stops, which it will do eventually, I’m gonna have to do something until I’m 65,” he muses.
MAIDEN FLIGHT
As the lead singer of heavy metal legends Iron Maiden, Bruce Dickinson has belted out songs like No Prayer for the Dying - not quite what you want to hear over the intercom of your charter Boeing 737. Steven Poole joins the newly qualified commercial pilot in the cockpit
Tuesday October 15, 2002
The Guardian
Bruce Dickinson is teaching me to fly. We are in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 simulator at the British Airways flight training facilities at Heathrow. Through the windows are the winking nightlights of Gatwick airport. “You’re doing extraordinarily well here, sir,” says the legendary heavy-metal frontman, as I wrench the joystick around and yellow alarm lights flash. While he solicitously explains the functions of the banks of switches, levers and luminescent screens, I’m waiting for him to start hollering Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter. “Too low - flaps,” says a stern electronic voice with an American accent. Buzzers sound. The runway looms up to meet us. Groundrush. I have information overload.
We land safely - thanks to Dickinson’s finessing of my controls. The hydraulic cabin comes to a shuddering halt and the whine of the engines and air-conditioning subsides. Which leaves only one question. What on earth am I doing in a £10m airliner simulator with the lead singer of Iron Maiden?
Dickinson has long been the renaissance man of rock - not content with selling 50 million albums, he wrote two novels and represented his country with fencing swords. Now he is a commercial pilot, working as a first officer for a new British charter airline called Astreus: hops to Portugal or the Greek islands in the summer, ski trips in the winter. He had a private pilot’s licence for years, which is not so unusual among the wealthy and famous, but what is he doing flying these monsters? The answer is that it’s even more of a rush.
“This started out years ago when I was in the middle of my solo career and I wasn’t sure whether it was going to be viable or not,” Dickinson explains, looking trim and happy in his pilot’s uniform and sensible haircut - the antithesis of Spinal Tap excess. “I did seriously think about going to fly aeroplanes as an alternative career. I was putting out piloting CVs that said nothing about me being the lead singer of Iron Maiden.” He was offered a job with the now-defunct airline British World, who put him in a 757, “a real rocketship of an aeroplane”.
“I’d flown across the Atlantic in light twin-engined aircraft and stuff - done a lot of Bigglesy-type things - but flying a jet airliner was the most challenging thing that I’d encountered,” he says. “The amount of information that you have to process. It’s very much a headtrip - you have to manufacture where the aeroplane is going to go and what its flightpath is going to be, and then you have to put the aeroplane where you want it to be. It’s quite a conceptual thing. I loved it.”
It’s also a useful insurance policy against ridiculous old age. “Put it this way: I’m not quite sure whether I want to be wandering around in spandex at 60,” chuckles the 44-year-old Dickinson. “But aviation has the opportunity of keeping you occupied, even in a non-flying role, to quite an advanced stage of decrepitude.”
Has he ever been accosted by a fan in his new job? He tells the story of a flight he was on when training with BA. “First trip, I’m all togged up with a BA uniform, hat and everything. We get off at Munich, I’m wandering down to the crew bus, and then making a beeline for me is an Iron Maiden fan in full regalia, T-shirt and everything, and I’m stood there going: ‘Oh God.’ And this guy comes straight up to me and he says [thick German accent] ‘Hello? But I must know …’ and I’m going ‘Yes, yes, yes …’” Pause for storytelling effect. “‘Is this the bus to Munich?’” He roars with laughter.
It turns out that Bruce’s fellow pilots are the real fans. “One of our captains at Astreus, we get into the cruise, we’ve done all our checks, and he goes, ‘There’s a new Megadeth album coming out, any chance of some swag?’ We’ve got a friend, Alvin, who’s an Airbus captain for BA, the most phenomenal Hammond organ player, he does sessions and everything.
“We actually assembled a band of airline pilots for a couple of Christmas parties. Only for airline pilots - closed shop. Although we had to borrow a drummer, ‘cos we couldn’t find one who was an airline pilot.” (Indeed, few people would feel safe on an aeroplane flown by a drummer.) “In the airline industry, I can’t really say I’ve ever met anybody who’s been a real pain in the arse,” Dickinson says. A notable contrast to the music business.
He snorts when I point out that he doesn’t need a proper job; that he could live in his rock mansion, counting his money for the rest of his life. “I’ve got a house in Chiswick - is that a rock mansion? I live in the ‘burbs, and have a Simpsons family lifestyle. All my kids are basically Bart Simpson. My daughter likes Steps and Barbie and Gareth. My middle son is the full-on Papa Roach, scratching and everything else. And my elder son is more into classic rock. He’s 12.”
And how do his kids feel about having a heavy-metal legend for a dad? “I’m just dad,” he protests, “and I say all the normal dad things, like ‘Turn that racket down!’ The irony is not lost on me, but that still doesn’t make any bloody difference,” he says.
Does he have any paternal feelings towards the new wave of heavy metal? “It’s such a mixed bag,” Dickinson points out. “Music journalists are desperately quick to consign things to the bargain bin of history, and then along comes a band like Nickelback, which is straight out of the 1980s in every way and does these huge numbers in terms of sales. And you’ve got bands like the Murder Dolls coming along now that are basically very retro, doing complete classic rock, but these are 16- and 17-year-old kids. It just keeps going round, it’s very cyclical. The thing that always is going to stand out is people that write good songs or good material, and people that are sincere. A band like Slipknot, for example, inspire huge loyalty from their following.”
Dickinson rejoined Iron Maiden three years ago for a global reunion tour and a new album, Brave New World. And rather than give up music for flying, he intends to continue combining his careers. (As it costs so much to train a pilot, airlines are happy to work around those who want to take unpaid leave.) The band is still a going concern, regardless of the vagaries of fashion. “As far as our audience is concerned, they quite like what we do, so it’s irrelevant what people think. It’s either a good Maiden record or a bad Maiden record, and if you don’t understand Iron Maiden, then it’s irrelevant what you think anyway. Metal is like that, it’s a series of little villages, if you like, and music increasingly is becoming like that, unless you’re in the big boyband, girlband-type things, which I really know nothing about. I’m probably way out of step with the rest of the population, but then, on the other hand, I am the lead singer of Iron Maiden, so almost by definition I’m out of step with the mass of the population,” he adds.
Dickinson was in prance mode on Top of the Pops only this summer, when Run to the Hills was re-released. Next month, a huge boxed set of live material, Edward the Great, will be released in a coffin-shaped package. “Cracking stuff - Reading ‘82, Hammersmith Odeon from the Number of the Beast tour …” And soon he’ll be taking more time off for a new studio album, scheduled for release next year.
Dickinson gets stuck into a discussion on music production - a wonderful studio in Paris that the band found a few years ago, the benefits of recording live into Pro Tools software, the differences between analogue tape, CDs and mp3s. The tech-lover’s gleam in his eye is the same as when he was explaining the complex workings of an aircraft’s control surface to me.
As we part, he says of our time in the simulator: “It’s a good toy to play with, isn’t it?”
And then he’s off, the most charming man in heavy metal, high on a life filled with so many interesting playthings.
METAL IN THE SKY: Iron Maiden singer visits Mildenhall
By Ron Jensen, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, October 26, 2004
RAF MILDENHALL, England — A passenger on one of the 100th Air Refueling Wing’s flights Monday afternoon was a commercial airline pilot.
But Bruce Dickinson is better known as the front man for Iron Maiden, one of the most successful and influential heavy metal bands in the business.
“When I was a kid, I had my own air force of plastic aircraft that I built,” Dickinson said before the afternoon flight.
But it was not until 13 years ago that he climbed in the cockpit and flew an airplane.
“When I did, I felt so stupid that I hadn’t done it before,” he said. “The farther from Earth I got, the happier I was.”
It may seem an odd combination of careers. On one hand, Dickinson is the manic singer of a heavy metal rock band. On the other, he is a cool, calm pilot of Boeing 757s for Astraeus, a British charter airline.
He was at Mildenhall to film part of a series he is hosting for the Discovery Channel called “Flying Heavy Metal.” The series will feature classic aircraft, such as the KC-135 Stratotanker. It is due to air on European television next year.
Except for his hair, which is only slightly outside of regulations, Dickinson looked like a pilot in his flight suit Monday when he greeted a roomful of fans who asked him to sign photos, CDs, a guitar, T-shirts and even a $10 bill.
“My brother had the ‘Seventh Son of a Seventh Son’ tape,” said Staff Sgt. Thomas Barriere of the 100th Operational Support Squadron, referring to an early album released when Barriere was only 13. “I wore it out.”
“I think it’s just awesome music,” said Staff Sgt. J.C. Berry of the 100th Logistics Readiness Squadron.
Dickinson signed his name, personalizing the signature when asked, and posed for photos with an easy patience, answering questions about upcoming tours and albums, shaking hands and thanking everyone for their interest.
“This will be the first time I’ve flown in a U.S. military plane,” he said, adding that the KC-135 has an important military heritage that makes it appropriate for the series.
Flying, he said, is “a world that is internal and external at the same time.”
The internal, he said, includes the instruments and the flight plan and the mechanics of the aircraft. The external is the weather, the sky and the rest of the world.
He said it is not so different from being on stage in front of a crowd, where the performance is the external result of the internal process of composing the music.
Most of his fans know he is a pilot, so there is rarely any surprise when the two careers are discussed. And he’s not alone in his dual pursuits, either.
“I meet a lot of pilots who are also musicians,” he said.
THIS IS YOUR PILOT (AND ROCK STAR) SPEAKING …
Bruce Dickinson juggles life as singer for the band Iron Maiden with flying a Boeing, reports Bill Stock
A rock star whose band is famed for long hair and wild on-stage antics has taken off a new career: as an airline pilot.
Bruce Dickinson, lead singer for the heavy metal band Iron Maiden, has passed rigorous flight exams to qualify fly twin-engine passenger jets with a new charter airline based in Gatwick. He now works as a £35,000-a-year first officer, flying 148-seat Boening 737s to holiday destinations ranging from Portugal to Egypt.
These days, Dickinson, 44, who once had waist-length ginger hair and leapt around stage in leathers and skin-hugging tights for crowds of up to 250,000 fans, set off for work in smart uniform, white shirt and tie.
“The change to real trousers is the end of an era,” he said “I usually wear shorts or trousers with an elasticated waistband and my garish trousers in Maiden were the stuff of legend.”
Dickinson still sings with Iron Maiden and in June appeared on Top of the Pops when a re-release of the band’s hit Run to the Hills reached No 9 in the charts. The band, with worldwide sales of more than 50 million records, has a huge following, and Dickinson takes holidays from the airline to tour Britain and the world.
Dickinson became fascinated by aeroplanes after attending airshows as a child in Worksop, Notts, where he grew up. At Oundle school he was a member of the combined cadet force and used the school’s Link trainer, a basic full-size cockpit simulator formerly used to teach RAF trainees to fly.
“I used to sneak into the the shed where it was kept, switch on, jump into the cockpit and fly it. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was great fun.”
His dabblings on the trainer came to an end when he was expelled at the age of 16 for “a moment of madness” involving the headmaster’s dinner.
Dickinson took up flight training in the early 1990s. He passed his pricate pilot’s licence test, obtained a commercial licence and eventually, with fellow band members, bought a twin-engine aircraft which he piloted for tours in Europe and the US.
In the late 1990s, a friend who was a commercial pilot invited him to act as his co-pilot on a Boeing 737 simulator while he was being checked on for a job with the charter airline British World Airlines.
The simulator instructor was Capt John Mahon, the airline’s operations director. “John was curious to find out about my flying skills and invited me to fly the sim. He later asked me for an interview and said he was looking for new pilots.”
Dickinson started flying as a co-pilot for British World on charter flights around the Mediterranean and to West Africa before the airline folded at the end of 2001.
When a number of BWA executives launched their own airline, Astraeus, in January, Dickinson went with them.
Capt Mahon, mow operations director of Astraeus said: “Bruce demonstrated a high level of flying skill and an operational maturity required for the position. I am delighted at his progression to flying our Boeing 737s.”
Several of Dickinson’s passengers have been taken aback to find themselves being flown by a famous rock star.
“We have had Iron Maiden fans on board who when they heard my name being announced as first officer asked the hostess if it was the rock star. When told it was they spent the flight with their jaws on the floor then ask if they can chat with me,” he said.
“After we landed a couple of fans have put their heads around the door and have said ‘Oh my God, it is him’.”
Dickinson is a master of the airwaves in another way - he hosts two thre–hour rock music programmes for the new BBC digital radio show 6Music.
However, flying is his real passion. “It’s a great job. Every time I arrive at the aircraft to star a flight I think ‘Wow, someone has lent me this for the day’. Nothing else compares.”
Q&A WITH BRUCE
What’s more exciting — flying at 30,000ft or performing in front of 30,000 people?
“I can only get up to 42,000 feet on a 757, so to get to the same level as Iron Maiden I’d have to get to 300,000 feet, which is the same as our crowd at Rock in Rio. That would be pretty exciting I reckon…but unlikely at the moment.”
Did you build model planes when you were young and dream of flying the real thing?
“I had a fleet of Heinkel 111’s, Focke wulf 190’s, Hurricanes, thunderbolts, Lancasters and a Sunderland, not to mention a plastic Zeppelin (not a Led one!!) Every now and then one would plunge to a fiery doom from my bedroom window after being modified by cotton wool and lighter fluid.”
Do you think flying would have been your career if you hadn’t got into music?
“It took me ages to pluck up the courage to have a go at flying, mainly because I thought I couldn’t cope with the academic side of the exams (I was hopeless at maths and physics at school). After my first flight I just decided that I would do whatever it took to get up to speed and pass the ground school.”
How long did it take to get your commercial pilot’s license?
“I spent a year doing the academic exams and the flying exams. I already had a private license and had a reasonable amount of experience. Once you have a commercial license and the Instrument Rating to go with it, then you are in a position to try and B*DGER people into letting fly their airplanes. The next hurdle is getting a job and passing the ground and flight exams to fly Jet aircraft — I found that very tough.”
Have you had any Iron Maiden fans clammering to get into the cockpit when they find out you’re at the controls?
“Almost every pilot I know regrets that fact that we are not allowed to have people visit the flight deck anymore. If we could let people up front then we would. Where are the pilots of tomorrow going to have their first experience of flight? So many young kids became pilots after visiting the flight deck. In some ways TV shows like ‘Flying Heavy Metal’ are the only ways of telling people what a great job it is.”
You’re obviously mad about flying and you have a pretty good knowledge of aircraft, did you learn anything that amazed or surprised you while you were making “Flying Heavy Metal”?
“We shot over 75 hours of footage for the series. Only a fraction of that was used, and I spent hours in conversation with some of the greatest designers in aviation history. I think some of the political interference with aviation designers was one of the most tragic aspects I discovered.”
What was the scariest moment, or biggest challenge you faced while making the series?
“When we took off in the KC 135 tanker, full of jet fuel, the whole fuselage filled with smoke and I thought we had an APU fire!! It turned out that the aircraft HAD actually caught fire the day before over Africa, and the smoke was residual crud and unburnt kerosene sloshing around in the plumbing.”
You raved about flying the Boeing 727, was it your favourite plane from the series?
“I’ve got to hand it to the 727 crew. They happily let me take off, whizz around the Everglades and do a touch and go plus three full stop landings in it. I really loved the 727, but I was also very surprised at the Airbus A320. Both are pioneering Aircraft from different eras, but I found both of them very harmonious in their design.”
What do you think was the greatest innovation in jet flight?
“After the aerodynamics of swept wings began to be understood, it was powerplants that were the big frontier. The 747 was plagued by its lack of power early on, and it’s only now that engines have been developed that are powerful enough to make superjumbos a reality.”
Given the chance which aircraft would you most like to fly that you haven’t already?
“Concorde, Harrier, F 16, F 86, T 33, Meteor, Me 262, Mig 17 and 21, Spitfire, Hurricane and FW 190. Blenheim and Lancaster, B17, B25, and a Constellation/DC 6. How’s that for starters?”
TO PARIS WITH BRUCE AIR - 24/11/2003 - Post written by Skunk taken from the tour diaries on Iron Maiden’s official website.
It takes a lot to get me to drag myself out of bed before double figures on a Saturday morning. But, a flight with Bruce to see a Maiden show in Paris is just a little more interesting than laying in and watching SM:TV. So, after a long wet drive to Gatwick in my wobbly little Micra, I’m at the check in desk with my ticket for flight 666!
I hung around at check in for a little while, meeting various people from the office, from EMI and of course the lucky competition winners. Bruce appears in his pilot’s uniform with a couple of Astreus flight attendants and the press in tow (the press will proceed to follow him all over the place all day) and says hello to everyone and does some shots for the various TV crews. People at the other check in desks, off on their routine flights to wherever, look a bit baffled by all this!
Time to leave this madness and go upstairs for some breakfast. We’d taken over part of Chez Gerard and there was a huge buffet breakfast laid on so that people could chill out and get some grub. Or go and stress themselves to bits watching the rugby on the big screens. As a good Scot’s girl, I was obviously supporting Australia, and was having a great time watching the predominantly English crowd looking rather anguished. But, after all the extra time, they went and won it, didn’t they. Much cheering, running around hugging random strangers and general English celebration… pah! 
During the rugby, Nicko had arrived and was chatting with fans and doing the autograph thing while simultaneously trying to have breakfast. A nice surprise for the competition winners, who didn’t know he would be acompanying us on the flight.
As the rugby had gone on so long, there wasn’t much of a wait before the call to board flight 666 came over the tannoys and we made our way down through passport control, onto the bus and out to the waiting 737.
Once everyone’s settled Bruce comes over the tannoy with a few cracks about the rugby, but also doing his pilot thing - making sure we all listen to the safety briefing and so on.
Some standard UK airport sitting around, and we’re off - bound for Paris! It’s a pretty short flight, but there’s time for a light lunch and Nicko comes round to have a wee chat with everyone on the plane - all 150 of us! And there’s plenty of First Officer Dickinson over the tannoy as well.
Oh yes, I almost forget… free goodie bags on boarding! Including a tour programme, Bruce Air stickers and a blue waterproof mac, which caused no end of perplexed faces until people unfolded it and saw that it’s a Rainmaker promotional thingy. You see what we did there? Rain… Oh whatever!
A round of applause erupts on landing… I don’t remember that ever happening on EasyJet. Apparently it’s a pretty short runway by 737 standards, but not a problem for Bruce Air. Now it’s organisation time - we’ve got to get everyone off the plane and into place for the ’school photo’ under the wing and we’ve got to do it fast, as another crew will be taking the plane away very shortly. Val takes charge and everyone’s in place, Bruce and Nicko front and centre. The press descend upon them again, but after some firm guidance we get the photos sorted out and everyone piled onto the three waiting coaches.
Two coaches whisk their occupants the few miles to the hotel right next to the Omnisport de Bercy. Unfortunately, I chose the one with the driver who decided to take a ’shortcut’ to avoid the heavy Satuday Paris traffic, and ended up going a rather scenic route! Needless to say, he was replaced for the journey back to the airport the next day.
Check into the hotel, out to grab something to eat (an excellent pizza) and it’s time for a bit of pre-show hospitality - drinks and nibbles at the hotel. We’ve all got seats at the gig, so there’s no need to queue up early. The hotel is literally 5 minutes walk from the venue, so we take our time. Some people go to catch Helloween, others preferring to stay where the free alcohol is!
Excellent concert. Everyone from the plane is seated up to the right of the stage, so we’ve got a great view. The sound in Paris is always good - it’s loud, but clear and doesn’t leave your head ringing afterwards. I had borrowed a ‘better’ digital camera, but unfortunately discovered that it doesn’t like low light conditions very much, so out of the hundreds of photos I took of the concert, you’re probably going to see about ten! After the first few songs, I pretty much gave up with it and just took in the show. Paschendale in particular was spectacular. This was the first time I’ve seen this show, and I was very, very impressed. The French crowd were great too, it’s fun being up in the seats and watching the people at the front swirling around and just going crazy.
Next morning, most folk are downstairs for breakfast, but I sleep in and miss it. Apparently the food was good too. I meet a few folk from work in the lobby and discover that Bruce is doing a little press conference later and I’m on video duty. Back into work mode then.
Once that’s all out of the way, the coaches return to take us back to Le Bourget for flight 667 - our return to Gatwick. A combination of light Sunday traffic and a driver who knows where he’s going means we get there in about twenty minutes, an advantage that’s then neutralised by lots of French standing around smoking cigarettes and looking confused. Not that anyone on the coach is that bothered, as there are quite a lot of hangovers being quietly endured.
There’s more press stuff going on, the TV guys getting some shots of Bruce in the cockpit and so on, while we all get on the plane. It’s a nice surprise to be individually welcomed onboard by Astreaus’ newest trolley dolly, Nicko McBrain. Bruce comes over the tannoy to let us know that the weather back in England sucks (it was sunny and warm in Paris) and doing his piloty thing again - slightly surreal having seen him fronting Maiden the night before. We set off on time and fly through clear skies over France.
During the in-flight meal, Nicko comes over the tannoy and leads a round of applause for the people who’ve been taking care of all the organising of the weekend - well deserved too, as there was a lot of logistics and the whole thing ran smoothly and nobody got left behind anywhere. There was a slight moment of ‘we’ve forgotten Dave from the office’ panic until someone remembered that he’d gone ahead to Dortmund!
We hit the English Channel and the skies go dark. Hmmmm. Fasten the seatbelts then, cos it’s getting bumpy. As we start the approach into Gatwick, Bruce is on the tannoy again to warn us that the weather’s getting bad and we might have to go around. Sure enough, not long into the descent the engines rev up and we’re going upwards instead of downwards. There’s too much windshear to land, so Gatwick are going to have us chug round a few times as the weather front should be passing fairly quickly.
The plane lines up for another attempt at terra firma and this time we make it. There’s another round of applause on landing, but this one’s a more heartfelt - a lot of people are rather glad to be back on the ground, myself included. Bruce apologies for the bumpy landing and informs us that we’re one of only two planes that have managed to land at Gatwick in the past forty five minutes or so - not a lot is coming in and even less is going out. Good old English weather, eh?
Bruce comes back into the cabin to shake everyone’s hand on departure from the plane, chatting, signing things, doing both of his jobs at once - signing Iron Maiden albums while dressed as an airline pilot. The weather’s horrible so everyone says their goodbyes and go their seperate ways. Some have got a long way still to go, having come from as far away as Brazil to be on the trip!
In summary, an awesome weekend and a true once in a lifetime experience!
- Skunk
BRUCE’S UPDATE FROM CLEVELAND, July 24, 1999
- Taken from the tour diaries on Iron Maiden’s official website.Here we are again folks. Last time I wrote we were shivering and shaking in Portugal [but that got hotter trust me!]. Right now I’m sitting in a hotel room in Cleveland hammering away at a laptop and we are 2 weeks into the tour and its sounding pretty exciting. Everyone will be sending in reviews so I don’t need to tell you about that kind of stuff, but lots of people are curious about the pictures of the Plane that rod put out, so I thought I’d tell you a little bit about the “Aces High gang” as Nicko likes to call us.
The Aircraft that we are flying is a twin engine Cessna 421B, which can seat up to 7 passengers and one Pilot. It will fly as high as 30,000 feet and is Pressurized, air conditioned, and yes it even has a loo! The C421 is a lovely plane to fly, I should mention at this point that I’m the Pilot, so I am somewhat biased, but everyone who has flown with us has loved it, in fact the only problem on some legs has been lack of seats, in other words we’re full up mate!
The USA and Canada is a fantastic environment for what is termed “General Aviation”, which means everything that flies except Airlines, Military, and birds. We can fly into all the big airports or, like here in Cleveland and in Toronto, into the downtown airports which are sometimes just yards from our hotel or the show. We are not restricted by schedules, we can leave or arrive at any hour of the day or night, and we have NEVER lost a bag, mainly because we have to load them ourselves!
A typical flight sees Nicko, Steve, Rod, Alan{our tour manager} and Dimo Safari the photographer on board. If we have a night flight people usually snooze, but on many of the day flights we have sightseeing options and I’m always open to requests. We had a spectacular departure out of Montreal up the St Lawrence River to Quebec, and en route from Boston to Toronto Mr. Kodak made lots of money as we dipped down to fly over Niagara Falls. We shall be commuting around the Mid West for a few days now, so I have to drop Steve off after the show in Detroit, and then the rest of us will probably go to Chicago. Rod wants to go to the Grand Canyon, and on the way from Denver to Los Angeles we’ll make a fuel stop in Las Vegas. Question? Will Rod win back the price of the gas on the tables?
Nicko is a fine pilot himself, which must be something to do with all that eye hand co-ordination that drummers are blessed with, so he usually sits up in the cockpit with me. Nick has let some of the recent experience requirements for his licence lapse so he can’t actually fly as Pilot in command at the moment, but as soon as we get to LA we’ll get him up in a trainer, get his nose back in the books, and we’ll have him airborne in no time. I should mention that safety is a primary concern at all times, and ensuring the safety of the flight is something that I take very seriously. Every day we do a thorough pre flight inspection before we fly, and before we take off the engines and propellers are tested, along with the electrical systems and all the flight controls.
On this US tour I take along an extra pilot and we run the aircraft as a 2-crew operation. Although I very often fly the plane on my own (it is certified for single pilot operation) it often increases our efficiency and decreases stress when both of us work together. Joe Justice owns a flight school in Santa Monica California and is a charter Pilot himself, and he’s the guy who is with us. Joe is a very relaxed guy and fits right in with the guys. Nicko is giving him Golf tips in return for flying lessons!
At the end of the US tour the plane will go in for a service check, and while mechanics are crawling all over it, it will have a satellite navigation system fitted and some radios modified in order to comply with European regulations. I am boning up on my Icelandic in preparation for flying across the big pond from Los Angeles to Paris sometime in August. I will fly the route with an experienced ferry pilot who has done the trip many times before. It’s the same route taken by the bombers in World War 2 as they headed for Britain in the darkest days of 1944. Departing from the Eastern tip of Canada the first stop is Greenland, followed by Iceland, then the North of ‘Scotland. It’s quite a trip and I’m certainly going to write an article about that one! Having got the plane back to Europe its time to have some mechanics look her over after the long flight, and prepare her for the European tour. Having got my Commercial licence and Instrument rating in Europe I’m pretty familiar with the potential for dismal weather. In the past when I’ve flown around Europe I have been flying non-pressurized aircraft restricted to the lower altitudes where the weather is the worst. As a pilot, I don’t mind doing that, the passengers on the other hand become noticeably less enthusiastic as they turn green in turbulence and howling rain! The beauty of the 421 [actually Cessna call her the “Golden Eagle”, so I’ll do that too] the beauty of the Golden Eagle is its ability to fly over the worst of the weather and clouds, to cruise over the Alps in air conditioned comfort, and to do it according to our own itinerary.
Nursing a cup of coffee at 23,000 ft en route from Quebec City to Newark International its around 1am and we are in the cruise. The autopilot is on now and the cockpit is quiet (the Golden Eagle is incredibly quiet). Steve and the guys are asleep in the back, half-finished beers and cokes resting in their cup-holders. I give the engine gauges a routine check and my thoughts turn to the show that night. I can still smell the pyrotechnic smoke on my t-shirt, the close call with the wall of flames in Powerslave, the manic grin from Steve as the crowd screams back during Number of the Beast. I look over at Joe. My hand reaches out and turns down the cockpit lighting, he understands and does the same over his side. In the stillness I crane my head forward to look up through the windshield at the canopy of sky above. There are stars. More stars than many people have ever seen. At our altitude the air is thin, we cannot survive without our machine around us, and yet it feels like we belong here. The Milky Way illuminates the back of my hands in its ghostly pale light. Beneath us the twinkling yellow lights and shimmering haze of Albany New York roll by in the night.
I am the singer with the best Heavy metal band in the world. I also fly the plane. Wow. What a gig!
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