Bruce Dickinson to stop piloting Iron Maiden plane

Bruce Dickinson, 63, leader of Iron Maiden and official pilot of the band since the 1990s, is expected to retire from that post soon. The revelation was made by himself to the AP agency and passed on by sites such as Blabbermouth.Net.

“We’ll be flying and I’ll be in the back. I’m 63, I’ll be 64 in August. You know, when you get to be 65, if you’re an airline pilot, they just send you there to the back, you know? , I’ll be there driving the back seat”, he commented.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States and the International Civil Aviation Organization, the pilot retires when he turns 65. However, there is no age limit for private or Air Force pilots.

Dickinson, in 2012, created his own aircraft maintenance company, Cardiff Aviation, which shortly afterwards changed its name to Caerdav.

In 2017, the singer told Wales Online that he was still thrilled to fly, but that he preferred to take the stage with the band. “The satisfaction of flying planes is to be doing your job, but the satisfaction of playing live is external, looking at all the people connected to you”, he commented.

In August 2021, Iron Maiden released the album “Senjutsu”. “We still don’t know how the tour will resume”, said guitarist Adrian Smith, in the band’s first interview with the Brazilian press about the new album. “We started recording the record in France, back in 2019. We had to postpone the release, but now the songs will be there for everyone to hear.”

With 40 Iron Maiden shows already performed in Brazil, he admitted a special relationship with the country. “We want to come back. It’s great to go to Brazil and play — and play football! Steve Harris still plays very well,” he says, laughing, which raises serious doubts about his colleague’s real football talent. “But seriously, it’s frustrating to see the pandemic turn everything upside down.”

The group’s seventeenth studio album, “Senjutsu” arrives six years after the previous one, “The Book of Souls”. It is the longest interval recorded to date between the band’s albums.

According to Smith, the right time to record is when you have good songs, simple as that. According to the guitarist, a new project is seen as two challenges. “Trying to sound different from what we’ve done before is the great motivation, but it comes with the desire to repeat the intensity of the previous works.”