“I am going to take my 12 hours, then we are heading back” said Iron Maiden singer / airline captain Bruce Dickinson to the BBC this morning after bringing home some 180 passengers from Egypt. “We managed to get a crew from Iceland Express to fly with us and get the stranded XL passengers,” he said and kept on saying that you might call this a multinational rescue effort. “They will be flying with us again when we go out after resting”.
Bruce Dickinson who leads a double life as a qualified pilot flies for the airline Astraeus was also in the news when he flew some UK soldiers home from Afghanistan earlier this month.
Iceland Express is a low cost airline flying from 14 destinations to Iceland. According to an Interview Morgunbladid with Matthias Imsland, the CEO of Iceland Express, they are getting some requests to assist, but won’t be able to do them all.
XL was, a few years back, a partly Icelandic owned company and loans still connected to the company are now shaking the Icelandic financial system. Companies like Eimskip and Straumur bank are set to lose significant amounts on the XL collapse; but Straumur insists the losses are a tiny proportion of the bank’s total assets. Landsbanki, whose chairman is Bjorgulfur Gudmundsson, the owner of West Ham, is to step in and help Eimskip.
That is metal as hell!!! Goooooo Bruce!
Fly to live, live to fly, amirite?