British heavy metal band Iron Maiden have announced they will be chartering a B747-400(F) from Air Atlanta Icelandic (CC, Reykjavik Keflavik) for their upcoming 2016 The Book of Souls World Tour. Unlike previous tours which used a B757-200 chartered from Astraeus (London Gatwick), TF-AMI (msn 27066) will not require extensive reconfiguration.
"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 B757-200 ), the extent of which fans will have noted on the Flight 666 DVD," frontman and commercial pilot Bruce Dickinson said. "Although in reality we cannot carry much more gear the savings in complexity, time and cost make using the 747 even more practical. Furthermore, it is marginally faster - 0.85 MACH - and the range of around 7,000NM (13,000 km) is much greater which means we will not have to make the refuelling stops we needed to with the 757."
The tour is set to kick off in February next year visiting the United States, Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Japan, China, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa before winding up in Europe in August.
