IRON MAIDEN vocalist Bruce Dickinson, who is a licensed commercial pilot, has set up a state-of the-art Boeing 737 flight simulator at London’s Heathrow Airport and is holding training sessions for members of the Iron Maiden Fan Club.

New footage from some of last month’s training sessions can now be seen below.

After the success of the first Bruce Air Flight 666 Experience, fan have another chance to fly Bruce Air in a state-of-the-art full motion 737 flight simulator with personal instruction from Bruce.

This full motion flight simulator has been purchased by Bruce and ex-Astraeus colleague Mario Fulgioni as part of their aviation business, training and checking pilots and crews from many airlines. In fact, Bruce did his own pilot training in a 737 simulator just like this one.

For those of you with good memories you might also recall that a 737 was the very first plane to bear the Bruce Air moniker when Flight 666 took its maiden voyage to Paris back in November 2003.

You will taxi the aeroplane around a major international airport, line up on the runway and perform the take off. If you’re good enough, you’ll do the landing too!

In between take off and landing, you will be shown the real performance capabilities of a modern airliner and experience the most advanced cockpit visuals.

You can book a slot and have an hour of Bruce‘s one-to-one tuition all to yourself, or you can split it between 2 or 3 of you and divide up the hour of flying time between you and your friends. Or if you just want to bring a couple of people to sit in the observers seats (directly behind the pilots seats), you can do that, too.

All participants will be given a personally signed commemorative Bruce Air Flight 666 certificate as a souvenir of their experience.

The Bruce Air Flight 666 Experience costs £666 + VAT (at 20%) for one hour of simulator time with Bruce.

For more information, visit www.bruceair.co.uk.

In a press release that was issued in November, Bruce commented, “I can’t wait to sit in the simulator with fans and share the buzz of what it is really like to fly a modern passenger jet such as Flight 666 and all the challenges that entails.”

Bruce Dickinson has a huge passion for flying — so much so that he is a commercial airline captain and a talented originator — devising an ingenious method of converting a Boeing 757 to allow him, the band, their crew and tons of equipment to tour three times around the world in their customised plane “Ed Force One”, call sign “Flight 666”.

Not content with just entertaining fans on the ground, Bruce then instigated a series of highly acclaimed “Bruce Air Flight 666” excursions, filling the plane with fans and personally flying them to and from various IRON MAIDEN concerts around Europe.

Dickinson told CNN.com in a 2007 interview, “Aviation’s been kicking around my family for as long as I can remember; my uncle was in the RAF. But I always thought I was too stupid. I was useless at maths and majored in history at university, so I thought history majors don’t become pilots, let alone rock stars. And then our drummer learned to fly so I said if a drummer can learn to fly then anyone can.”

He added, “I never dreamed I would end up flying an airliner. I ended up flying IRON MAIDEN around on tour in a little eight-seat, pressurized, twin-engine plane. Basically we were flying round all the world’s major airports, flew across the Atlantic and back, which was quite an adventure. At the end I thought I really want to fly something bigger, but I can’t afford it — I can’t buy my own 707. If I’m going to do that I have to get a job.”

On how the thrill of piloting a 757 compares to taking to the stage with MAIDEN:

“It’s a different kind of buzz. Obviously you aren’t leaping around the flight deck yelling and screaming, but you have to manage situations… Flying at 35,000 feet is an internal thing, really. Whereas 35,000 people, that’s just showing off.”

On whether he will be hanging up his leopard-skin spandex forever:

“I could never contemplate giving up music. I have to say I’ve always been interested in planes, the only difference is I started to fly the darn things 15 years ago. I don’t see why I should give up either of them. People say ‘Why do you need a second job?’ I say ‘Why do you need to breathe?'” Source: Blabbermouth.net