Bruce Dickinson, the singer of Iron Maiden, one of the world’s most popular heavy metal bands, who used to work for the recently bankrupted Iceland-owned, UK-based airline Astraeus as a pilot and marketing director, is now planning its acquisition.

Bruce Dickinson. Source: Wikipedia.

Dickinson told Morgunblaðið that if necessary measures had been undertaken six to nine months ago a bankruptcy could have been avoided; projects had been guaranteed throughout the winter but were later canceled.

Astraeus served as the aviation operator for Iceland Express. Both companies were in the ownership of Icelandic investor Pálmi Haraldsson. Dickinson would now like to take over Astraeus’s ownership and get the airline started again.

Meanwhile, WOW Air, a new Icelandic airline, was formally opened for bookings yesterday when body-builder and priest Jóna Lovísa Jónsdóttir inaugurated the airline’s online booking system and blessed the operations.

“WOW is of course just WOW, and we have said that we simply find Iceland to be WOW. Also, if you turn the name upside down it reads MOM and everyone wants to be cuddled by the moms,” the airline’s chair and majority owner Skúli Mogensen explained.

The airline offers flights between Keflavík International Airport and 12 destinations in Europe next summer: Copenhagen, London, Berlin, Cologne, Stuttgart, Paris, Lyon, Alicante, Basel, Zürich, Warsaw and Krakow.

ESA