Ed Force One — Iron Maiden's 747

Of all the strange jobs the 747 has been given — carrying space shuttles, a telescope, a laser — this is the only one that involved a heavy metal band flying itself around the world.

The aircraft

TF-AAK, a Boeing 747-400. It entered service with Air France in 2003, was acquired by Air Atlanta Icelandic in 2015, and was chartered to Iron Maiden for The Book of Souls World Tour in 2016.

The band had used Boeing 757s on the two previous tours. The 747 offered considerably more space for band and crew, greater range, and — the practical reason — a far larger hold, so an entire stage production could be loaded and unloaded quickly enough to keep a six-continent schedule.

The pilot

Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden’s singer, is a qualified airline pilot. He had flown the band’s previous 757s, and for the 747 he took a full type rating on the aircraft in order to fly it.

He was Ed Force One’s main pilot for the duration of the tour.

It is worth being clear about what that means. A 747 type rating is not a courtesy: it is a demanding professional qualification on a four-engined widebody with a maximum takeoff weight approaching 400 tonnes, and the aircraft was carrying his colleagues and crew across oceans.

Why it fits here

The 747’s afterlife is full of second careers — freighters, testbeds, satellite launchers, heads of state. Being a band’s tour bus is at the eccentric end, but it rests on the same qualities: enormous hold volume, long range, and enough airframes on the second-hand market that chartering one was possible at all.

Air Atlanta Icelandic, the operator, is itself part of that story — a charter airline that has flown 747s long after most scheduled carriers gave them up.

Related

• Special Boeing 747s
• Where the 747s went
• The 747-400