IRON MAIDEN Frontman To Attend Romania's AERO GRAND PRIX Show

According to Metalhead.ro, IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson will attend the first Aero Grand Prix show to be held in Romania, set to take place August 25-26 in Mamaia. Dickinson will appear at the event as a commentator.

Bruce, a gifted fencer and radio presenter, is a commercial pilot, regularly flying Boeing 757s.

Dickinson started flying as a co-pilot for British World on charter flights around the Mediterranean and to West Africa, before the airline folded at the end of 2001.

When a number of BWA executives launched their own airline, Astraeus, in January 2002, Dickinson went with them.

"When you're up at 41,000 feet at night, flying in the middle of Europe and you look down and you can see all these lights, and then you look up and you see more stars than you've ever seen before in your life, it's just amazing," Dickinson told Billboard magazine in 2003. "You see the weather, you see thunder storms from hundreds of miles away. I get to see the best light show in the world."

Dickinson said his interest in flying picked up in the mid-'80s, after IRON MAIDEN drummer Nicko McBrain got his pilot's license. But it wasn't until 1992, when he spotted a sign at a Florida airport advertising flying lessons for $35, that things changed.

"In '93, when I left IRON MAIDEN for six years and embarked on a solo career, it did strike me that if the solo career didn't work out, I was going to be jobless," he said. "So I decided that I would go and do the airline pilot exams in Europe."

Although IRON MAIDEN have no plans of retiring anytime soon, the singer foresees a time when he'll be flying exclusively.

"When it gets to when IRON MAIDEN stops — which it will do eventually — I'm gonna have to do something until I'm 65," he said.