IRON MAIDEN Frontman Flying High - Aug. 11, 2003

One of the greatest things about being a rock star is never having to work another day in your life, right?
So why, you might ask, would a rocker as financially secure as Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson, the singer of a band that is still selling out Madison Square Garden some 20 years down the line, want to go out and work a J-O-B?Well, because it's a job that parallels his love for singing and performing.
When he's not on the road or in the studio with Maiden, Dickinson spends a good chunk of his year piloting 150-seat Boeing 737s for Astraeus Airlines in London.A first officer for Astraeus and a pilot for some 11 years, Dickinson logged between 600 and 700 hours in the air for the company last year, regularly jetting back and forth from London to such locales as Egypt, Iceland and the former Soviet Union.
During Maiden's recent tours, he's even flown himself and several band members from gig to gig in a Cessna 421 Golden Eagle, a seven-seat propeller plane.Dickinson, whose first commercial job was with British World (an independent airline that folded after Sept. 11, 2001), equates discovering his love for flying to finding another woman. When he's flying, his wife often remarks, " 'Oh, he's off sleeping with the tin bitch again,"' he relays with a laugh.He adds that he's constantly humbled by flying.

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He just flew the Rangers to Isreal for thier UEFA Cup soccer match!