Pop singer Captains 757 from Perth to Melbourne

Ed Force One, named after the skeletal mascot emblazoned on the tail, is a Boeing 757 chartered by the band to fly 12 tonnes of equipment and a 60-strong crew as they take their powerful brand of rock to more than 1.5 million fans around the world.

And captaining the plane as it took off from Perth for Melbourne yesterday was lead singer Bruce Dickinson.

Dickinson is a qualified airline pilot who, when he’s not belting out songs to packed stadiums, flies for British-based Astraeus Airlines.

The band played to 10,000 fans in Perth on Monday and will do concerts in Melbourne before heading to Sydney over the weekend and Brisbane early next week.

The Australian dates are part of the first leg of Maiden’s Somewhere Back in Time world tour that will see Dickinson and his crew fly between 80,000km and 161,000km in the plane.

Maiden emerged in the late 1970s and soared to international prominence with the release of their 1982 album The Number of the Beast. They have since sold more than 100 million albums and still manage to pack stadiums. The latest tour will see the band travel as far north as Anchorage, Alaska, and as far south as Santiago, Chile.

Dickinson has been flying for Astraeus for six years and moved to the captain’s seat last May. “I never got into flying because I was pretty crap at maths and physics at school so I just thought I’d be too stupid so ended up being a rock singer instead,” he said.

“Then when our drummer got his pilot’s licence I thought, ‘Blimey, if he can get a pilot’s licence, I must be able to’.”

After qualifying, the rock star flew the band around the world in a Cessna 421 but quickly developed a hunger for bigger planes.

“Although they pay me pretty well as the singer with Iron Maiden, I’m not quite in the John Travolta league of being able to afford my own 707,” he said.

Dickinson circulated his CV and finally got a job as a 757 first officer with British World Airlines. The company failed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks but Astraeus rose from its ashes.

The conversion of Ed Force One to a combination passenger and freight aircraft cost more than $500,000.

Dickinson says the band is attracting a new generation of fans. “We’re playing to a million and a half people on this tour, it’s incredible,” he said.

“I just think it’s the fact that we’re one of the last originals.

“We haven’t changed, we haven’t compromised ourselves, we haven’t done a deal with Mastercard.

“With Maiden it’s about the music and that’s it. What you see is what you get.”