Bruce Dickinson To Fly Iron Maiden's Plane For 2008 World Tour

09/13/07 6:30pm

by Jason MacNeil (CHARTattack)

British heavy metal legends Iron Maiden will commence their 2008 world tour in Australia early next year, but perhaps the oddest thing about the tour will be how the band will get around and who will get them there.

The group will mount their Somewhere Back In Time Tour in three stages. The first leg will be in February and March and see the band hit 20 cities on five different continents, including North and South America, with Japan and India also in the cards. The tour officially begins on Feb. 4 in Perth, Australia.

The second phase will see a more extensive North American tour in May and June before the group head to Europe for a large-scale tour of stadiums and various summer festivals. The band will take their 60-man crew and staff in an Astraeus Boeing 757 that will be decorated with Maiden designs and the group's Eddie mascot on the sides. Singer Bruce Dickinson will pilot the plane from city to city.

"It's pretty complex but in the end we were able, with a lot of help from Astraeus Airlines, to overcome all the technicalities of customizing the plane for our purposes," Dickinson says on the Maiden website. "By taking band, personnel and equipment in one form of transport it makes all the touring so much easier and overcomes the logistical difficulty of people and equipment going in different places. And it allows me to combine two of my greatest passions, music and flying."

The tour's production will be based around the group's 1984-85 Powerslave Tour, which included large Egyptian pyramids. It will also include "Cyborg Eddie." The band will release two DVDs next year, Live After Death and Maiden England.