Dickinson Recalls ‘Emotional’ Flight Home With British Soldiers

Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson, also an experienced airplane pilot, not long ago remembered a single of his more memorable flights when he transported Royal Air Power troops back property from Afghanistan.

The musician explained to the psychological tale through his Feb. 19 spoken term show at the Uptown Theater in Kansas Metropolis, Mo., as element of the English entertainer’s ongoing An Evening With Bruce Dickinson 2022 tour, now crisscrossing the U.S. and Canada. See the remaining tour dates and get tickets listed here.

Dickinson stated, “One of the positions that we had at the airline I labored for, we experienced an plane permanently allocated to the navy to go and consider individuals places. Not to wars, but we would take them to bases. Sometimes we flew people today again.” (by means of Blabbermouth)

“We flew men and women back again who experienced been in Afghanistan … been in a war,” the rocker continued. “They would go someplace for two or three weeks to try out and readjust and then we might just take them back again. 1 distinct flight, we were traveling the Royal Air Power Regiment, which is boots-on-the-floor soldiers. … It was an unusual flight simply because we were returning them to their real house base, not to a military services airfield.”

Dickinson added, “They experienced taken some casualties and they had dropped some folks. But they were being all seriously cheerful, the very best travellers you could at any time have in the armed forces. … So as we ended up coming in to land, we stopped and we blew the reverse thrust. I experienced a feminine co-pilot, initial officer. We were looking out, and all definitely shut to the runway had been households, young ones — all the households and wives and everybody of all the troopers. They were all [holding signs saying], ‘You’re my hero, Daddy,’ and almost everything else. It was pretty emotional. We basically experienced to cease the plane due to the fact my co-pilot was welling up. … We have been each attempting not to [cry].”

The Iron Maiden vocalist has finished a lot as an aviator, like piloting the veteran metallic band’s Ed Force A single jetliner and operating as a commercial pilot for defunct charter enterprise Astraeus Airlines. But maybe nothing could have prepared him for this flight.

“I went, ‘OK, we’re gonna stop. We’re gonna blow our noses, make positive we can fucking see wherever we’re likely, and then do the position,'” Dickinson recalled. “This is genuinely excellent. The very last matter you wanna do is go, ‘It was so psychological, we ended up in a fucking ditch.’ So we dropped them off and that was it. That was a person of the additional memorable flights.”

Dickinson, a most cancers survivor, has shared considerably through these engagements. He recently named his preferred feminine singer, guessed Maiden’s most underrated song and unveiled ideas for a new solo album. In January, he spoke to Loudwire about his 2022 designs.

Past yr, Iron Maiden released their 17th studio album, Senjutsu. It contains the singles “The Writing on the Wall” and “Stratego.” The group’s Legacy of the Beast world tour resumes this slide.

Watch Dickinson inform his Royal Air Power story down below.

Bruce Dickinson Remembers Memorable Flight With British Soldiers – Feb. 19, 2022