Iron Maiden's plane has been broken into parts and put up for sale

CNN

18-03-2025

English heavy metal band Iron Maiden once sang, 'Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter,' but when it comes to dismantling the band's Boeing 747-400 tour plane, it's a little more complicated.
German company Aviationtag, which specializes in upcycling scrapped airplanes, has created a limited run of one-of-a-kind tags made from the fuselage of Ed Force One, the moniker given the plane that served the band on its 2016 Book of Souls world tour.
The tail fin was decorated with the image of Eddie, Iron Maiden's zombie-like mascot, but it's now the plane's turn to be dismembered and then resurrected.
Each tag, which can be used as a keychain or simply as a collector's item, is made from the plane's white fuselage.
'To create color variations, we also incorporated material from the blue tail fin, which had up to nine layers of paint applied over time,' Aviationtag's chief commercial officer Tobia Richter tells CNN.
They're sized around 1.5 by 3.5 inches (35 by 88 millimeters) and retail at €66.66 (around $73) on Aviationtag's website.
The price point, of course, is a nod to 666 and the Iron Maiden hit, 'The Number of the Beast.'
A Boeing 747-400 is a full 71 meters (230 feet) in length, so, in theory, Ed Force One could be turned into up to 100,000 tags, explains Ricther, but their preference is to keep things to a limited run.
Aviationtag has been upcycling aviation materials since 2006, and has turned everything from commercial craft like the Airbus A380 to military planes such as the DC-3 'candy bomber' into collector's items.
'We want to keep offering our fans and collectors new aircraft from different airlines, rather than making massive editions from just one plane,' says Richter. 'That's why we prefer smaller, exclusive editions from a wider variety of aircraft, ensuring each tag remains truly special.'
On Ed Force One, 'in some areas, we even discovered gold-colored paint beneath the layers, adding an extra touch of uniqueness to this edition,' Richter adds, explaining that the gold versions will be released at a later date.
The full process of creating the tags takes several weeks. 'After cutting the panels, we move on to cutting them into strips, punching, deburring, cleaning, laser engraving the front, engraving the back, cleaning again, attaching the ring and chain, and finally mounting the tag on the cardboard,' says Richter.
The full process can be seen in Aviationtag's 'Making of' video.
According to planespotters.net, the aircraft was delivered to Air France in 2003 under the registration F-GITH, before going to Air Atlanta Icelandic in 2015 as TF-AAK. It also did a brief stint with Saudi Arabia Airlines before eventually being withdrawn from use in 2022 and broken up at Cotswold Airport in the UK in 2024.
Bruce Dickinson, frontman of Iron Maiden, is a licensed pilot whose passion for aviation is well known. Having flown Ed Force One himself, he said in a press release, 'She always behaved like the Queen of the Skies that the 747 will always be. There will never be another to occupy her throne. The power, the noise of those 4 engines, the featherlight touchdowns (not my fault — blame good design) and her airborne elegance put the 747 in a uniquecategory.'
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