[Quest:] Well, it's loud, raucous, and it is Bruce Dickinson there singing "The Flight of Icarus," 1983 hit by the English heavy metal band, Iron Maiden. Unlike the Greek mythology of Icarus, which nobody wants that to have anything to do with aviation, Mr. Dickinson really does fly. And he flies professionally. He served as the pilot of the bands official plan, Ed Force I. On their recent tour "The Books of Souls," Dickenson flew the group, crew and equipment around the world on their custom Boeing 747, which incidentally he had to recertify since he was only certified for the 75 and the 73 and he's certified for the 74. He's also the chairman of Cardiff Aviation, an MRO aircraft maintenance company. It's currently working with a company, Air Djibouti, providing the airline with operational management. In Dickinson's own words, he calls it an airline in a box service. For this country, Djibouti, on the eastern coast, where they're now providing an airline literally readymade, from training crew to renovating aircraft. Bruce Dickenson joined me earlier and I asked him how Air Djibouti's business model can prosper against the bigger Gulf carriers.
[Bruce Dickinson, Chairman, Cardiff Aviation:] The whole point about Djibouti is we're a nice comfortable niche sitting there. It's got some very strategic aspects to the country, which if you look at the geography of the place, it's a vital western interest. And of course there is a lot of western personnel going to and from Djibouti, it's secure, it's safe. It's financially stable. There's a lot of good things going for it. To answer your question about the Gulf states. Djibouti is terrific because it has a relatively small catchment area. But where do they want to go? They want to go to London. They want to go to Paris. If you want to go to London or Paris, you have to go via somewhere else. There's only one flight a week from Paris direct to Djibouti and it costs an absolute small fortune. So we've got a nice little niche there. The real niche of Djibouti though is not necessarily just passenger traffic. I mean, we're under no illusions that we're going to worry Emirates or Etihad or Qatar anytime soon. That's not the reason why we're doing it. We're doing it because the place needs an airline. There is a market. There are people who do want to go direct, point-to-point, to places in Europe. And at the moment you can only do it by doing something else. But the real market is freight. The real market is freight, sea air cargo. Djibouti is the number one cargo destination for pretty much all Chinese goods into Africa and into the Middle East. And they're building a massive free port and container terminal. So the real reason why we're going to develop Air Djibouti and why it will grow will be freight, because freight is where the freight arrives in Djibouti. It doesn't go by sea to the Gulf. It doesn't go anywhere else. It sits there in Djibouti.
[Quest:] You alluded at the beginning of this before we actually started the interview, but why you think your aviation love, passion, whatever we wish to call it, and your music love and passion, why you think they are particularly complementary?
[Dickinson:] Well, I know a lot of musicians who are pilots. And vice- versa, a lot of professional pilots I happen to know who are musicians also. There's something about the three-dimensionality of both mediums. And there's also something about the creative aspects of both things. I mean, I've got to say, for my sins, for the last three or four years, I've been doing some business and corporate speaking, something I call corporate stand-up. But one of the big questions is creativity. And people want to know how do you be creative in business? I said, well, I've been being creative, song writing, all my life. So I think naturally about creative things. To me, creating a business idea is very much like creating a song. It starts off from one little idea and then you just daydream what happens next, and eventually you have to put it into a process. And eventually you have to make it fit and make it real. But we started, for example, a maintenance company, and it's still working away happily, fixing Boeing and Airbus airliners and we've done all kinds of work for major customers like EasyJet and people like that in Wales. People said, but you're a pilot, why are you starting a maintenance company? I said, it's really simple. If you want to sell lawnmowers, what should you do? They went, I don't know, open a lawnmower shop? I said, no, you buy a patch of grass and wait. Some people come along and say, you need to cut the grass, you say, I can sell you a lawnmower. It's the same sort of thing. It's same weird lateral thinking. And I applied the same logic to our airline business, which is, why have you got a maintenance company? Because eventually people will bring you airplanes that they don't know what to do with. At which point you can say, we can make money for your airplane. At which point you get a cheap airplane. You do everybody a favor. It's a good deal for everybody, but at the same time you don't have to commit a massive expense to that airplane. Why do airlines go bust? Answer, because they own airplanes.
[Quest:] We will have a Profitable Moment after the break.