Air Atlanta Icelandic Boeing 747-428 TF-AAK Serving as ‘Ed Force One’ for Iron Maiden on The Book of Souls World Tour, 2016 - in 4:1 Scale



For those not in the know, in 2016 Iron Maiden chartered a jumbo for their world tour in support of their album ‘The Book of Souls’. This is that plane.






It all started in the 1990s when the band’s lead singer Bruce Dickinson learned to fly. In the 2000s he took on a second job as a pilot of Boeing 757s for the British charter airline Astraeus, starting as a first officer and eventually becoming a captain – or as Bruce himself put it, he was a full-time pilot who took unpaid leave to go sing for Iron Maiden.



When the band were preparing for their 2008 ‘Somewhere Back in Time’ World Tour, he had a thought – they could charter a 757 from Astraeus, fit it out for half passenger, half cargo and then take the band, crew and stage show around the world all on the same plane. And of course, this meant that he would get to fly it. The plan was kicked into motion, and was particularly useful to the band because it meant that they could play shows in areas where it just wouldn’t be economical to do so otherwise, if they had to try to get the band, crew and stage show into a city all on regular scheduled flights. Much simpler to put everything on one plane and fly it on their own schedule. The plane was named ‘Ed Force One’, after their mascot Eddie the Head, and riffing on the US Presidential callsign, Air Force One. Eddie was painted on the tail, in his mummy guise from the Powerslave artwork, which was the theme of the tour.



So they flew a globetrotting tour, and filmed it for a documentary and concert DVD, called ‘Flight 666’.



Come their next tour, ‘The Final Frontier’ world tour, they repeated the arrangement with another Astraeus 757, this time painted in the artwork from The Final Frontier album.



However after that Astraeus went out of business. Iron Maiden did not have their own plane for the Maiden England World Tour 2013-2015.



But by the time they were planning the Book of Souls World Tour for 2016, another idea was running around. This time, why not lease a 747 from another airline? Bruce had founded his own company, Cardiff Aviation, which had a simulator he could use to gain his type qualification to fly the 747. The bigger plane would allow them to carry everything they needed in normal configuration, using the standard cargo bay rather than having to load their equipment through passenger doors.



So they leased a 747-428 from Air Atlanta Icelandic, registration TF-AAK. This time it only required minor adaptations, and was painted in The Book of Souls livery. The plane carried the band on the globetrotting leg of their tour in 2016, starting when they flew into Florida in February. There was a notable incident on the ground in Chile where maintenance crews accidentally crashed the plane into a ground tug which injured a couple of technicians and damaged two engines. The band continued into Brazil on hastily arranged ground transport, while teams worked around the clock to repair the plane. It was back in service ten days later. The plane was last used in June 2016, because the remaining legs of the tour were European/North American where the shows were close enough together that it made more sense to use the traditional ground transport. It was returned to Air Atlanta Icelandic and is currently leased to Saudi Arabian Airlines.