Iron Maiden’s Ed Force One is a thing of beauty, but early this morning, it was badly damaged in Chile. The 747 was tethered to a tow truck when the steering pin fell out and caused the jet to crash into the ground tug at the Comodoro Arturo Merino Benitez airport in Santiago Chile. And while it may need two new engines, the band’s shows are expected to go on. Here’s what the band said via their website:
Ed Force One was this morning tethered to a tow truck to be taken for refuelling prior to flying over the Andes to Cordoba for the next show. On moving the steering pin that is part of the mechanism that connects the ground tug to the aircraft seemingly fell out. On making a turn the aircraft had no steering and collided with the ground tug badly damaging the undercarriage, two of the aircrafts engines and injuring two ground tug operators, both of whom have been taken to hospital. We hope of course that they make a full and speedy recovery and we will be closely monitoring their progress. The flight engineers are on site and evaluating the damage, but their initial report is that the engines have suffered large damage and will require an extended period of maintenance and possibly two new engines.
We are currently making contingency arrangements to get to the show in Cordoba tomorrow with band, crew and equipment intact. Fortunately the 20 tons of equipment had not been loaded onto Ed Force One at the time of the accident. Although this is tragic for our beautiful plane, we do not expect this to affect our concert schedule including the next two shows in Cordoba and Buenos Aires. And we hope to find a new Ed Force One to continue this adventure with us in the near future. To finish on a high note, however, our visit to Chile was a huge success with 58,000 fans coming to the show as totally brilliant as ever in the Stadium Nacional last night. We love you guys!
It’s a shame that the band will be losing Ed Force One, which frontman Bruce Dickinson had been piloting. It was absolutely the most badass form of transportation a band could have had. However, it’s fortunate that it happened on the ground, not in the air, and that no one was seriously injured. If there’s one band that can come back from having their plane damaged, it’s Iron Maiden, though. It’s also nice to see a band not start a crowdfunding campaign after their touring vehicle gets damaged!
