The vocalist spoke at an event in Türkiye
During the “Brand Week Istanbul 2017” event, which takes place annually in Turkey, Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson gave a lecture entitled “Creating the Fan from the Customer” and commented that “Metallica fans are actually customers. ”
“We have a plane to fly to the places where we play. It was very expensive to fly the traditional way, so we started thinking about how to reduce costs for the fans. We don't want our fans to become customers. Because if our fans become customers, they might become Metallica fans.”.
Bruce concludes his reasoning:
"Joking aside, we have fans all over the world and they want us in their countries. However, flying to every show on a regular plane would be very expensive. So we made a deal with a South African airline and found our own airlines.".
The statement comes in the same week that Bruce explained why in 2011 he had said that Iron Maiden is better than Metallica .