Ed Force One is back in action again on the current Iron Maiden World Tour. Repairs have been completed following the damage that occurred during towing at an airport in Chile on the morning of March 12. Iron Maiden officially announced that Ed Force One has been fully repaired, and took off on Tuesday, March 22 from Santiago, Chile. The plane will rejoin the band on its current world tour in Brasília at the Presidente Juscelino Kubitschek international airport. The plane will once again be loaded up with the band 20 plus tons of equipment and tour personnel to fly onto Fortaleza for the bands concert on Thursday. From there the tour will move on to Sao Paulo, before the band leaves Brazil for New York City beyond. Iron Maiden’s The Book Of Souls world tour will visit 36 countries over five months.
Ed Force One damage repaired
The towing accident resulted in the replacing of both of the Boeing 747 aircrafts port side engines. Ed Force One is on lease from Air Atlanta, which went into immediate action following the incident to complete the repairs with the assistance of Boeing. An emergency meeting was held last Sunday to create a comprehensive plan to carry out this complex operation. This included locating suitable engine replacements, thrust reversers, engine cowlings and other required parts. Plans also had to be made to work out the necessary tooling, technicians, logistics, and freight transportation to complete the project. On Thursday the 17th of March, a Cargolux 747 freighter left Luxembourg carrying the two replacement engines that were transported from Hannover, Germany. The charter plane then stopped at Stansted Airport in the UK to collect more consignment parts. Tooling and consumables were flown in from Jeddah to Heathrow, before being forwarded to Stansted. The chartered 747 then flew the 7,410 mile flight to Santiago last Friday. There were six technicians that arrived from Iceland and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson, who is the pilot of Ed Force One, stated “The speed and thoroughness of this incredibly complex operation was stunning, and we are so very pleased to get our plane back! We would like to thank Air Atlanta and their terrific rescue team for a fantastic effort in achieving this in the time they did, and to Boeing, LAN Chile, ACS and Rock It Cargo for all their invaluable support. We are sorry, though, for our fans in Cordoba, Buenos Aires, Rio and Belo Horizonte who missed out seeing the plane, but we hope they enjoyed the concerts as much as we did. We should also thank our killer crew, who found themselves at lunchtime on the Saturday of the accident with over 20 tons of equipment at the airport in Santiago and over 60 people all to get to Cordoba for early the next day to set up the huge show we are carrying. The distance is ‘only’ 1000km, but with a small matter of the Andes in between! They did it, by the skin of the teeth, and all went very well for the show in Cordoba and the other cities Ed Force One just missed. It’s quite a feat of logistics to find and put into action at such short notice all the transport, replacement air charters, schedule flights etcetera to enable us to play those next four shows on time without Ed Force One, our transport for everything. Great effort, team, many thanks from all of us. And to our promoter MOVE and ACS for all their assistance and time with this too.”
Photo from www.ironmaiden.com
