Iron Maiden’s New 747 “Ed Force One” Jetliner is the Most Badass Plane They’ve Had Yet
Iron Maiden have made a thing out of flying their own custom jet around the globe on their world tours, whatwith vocalist Bruce Dickinson being a commercially licensed pilot and all. They first took “Ed Force One” out on their 2008-2009 world tour then did so again in 2011, so there’s no reason they’d stop now: as one of the few bands in the world (and certainly in metal) who do true WORLD tours — from continent to continent, with only a handful of dates on each — it’s simply the most economical way to go. Plus it’s really fucking badass!
The Ed Force One jet they’ll be taking to the skies for their massive, six-month long Book of Souls world tour this year is bigger and better than any of the two previous iterations: it’s a 747 with even more cargo and passenger room than the band’s previous vehicles. Here, let’s allow Captain Bruce Bruce to explain:
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 crew 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 refueling stops we needed to with the 757.
There’s a fan-filmed walkaround video of the new Ed Force One that you can watch below, but the dingus who filmed it did so with her phone positioned vertically, so do so at your own risk (IT’S 2016, PEOPLE, WHY IS THIS STILL AN ISSUE). Better, take a look at this diagram which illuminates the differences between the new rig and the old ones:
https://youtu.be/0ew-fCrD-1w
