Paul Bruce Dickinson was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. His mother, Sonia, worked part-time in a shoe shop, and his father, Bruce, was a mechanic in the army. Dickinson's birth hurried the young couple, then just teenagers, into marriage. Initially, he was brought up by his grandparents; his grandfather was a coal-face worker at the local colliery and his grandmother was a housewife.

Dickinson learned to fly recreationally in Florida in the 1990s and now holds an airline transport pilot's licence. He regularly flew Boeing 757s in his role as captain for the now-defunct UK charter airline Astraeus, which, from 16 September 2010, employed him as Marketing Director. One of his key roles in that position was to promote Astraeus' services by increasing their number of videos, leading to the UK Civil Aviation Authority releasing a video featuring Dickinson on aircraft loading safety in June 2011. Following Astraeus' closure on 21 November 2011, Dickinson branched into entrepreneurship when he launched Cardiff Aviation Ltd on 1 May 2012, an aircraft maintenance business based at the Twin Peaks Hangar in St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. According to The Wall Street Journal, in January 2013 Cardiff Aviation had created 40 jobs and hoped to have over a hundred personnel by the summer of 2013. In June 2013, The Daily Telegraph reported that the business had expanded to between 60 and 70 employees and are in discussions to set up their own airline. In August 2015, Cardiff Aviation signed a deal to provide airline support to Air Djibouti, for whom Dickinson piloted their maiden flight the following year, a Boeing 737 from Cardiff to Djibouti. As a result of his ventures in business, he has delivered keynote speeches at events around the globe, including Queen Mary University of London's Innovation Showcase in November 2012, Connect2Business, Stockholm in March 2013, Aviation Week's MRO Europe Conference, London in October 2015 and "Blog Now, Live Forever", Mumbai in October 2015. His role as a pilot has led to some high-profile flights, which include returning a group of British RAF pilots from Afghanistan in 2008, 200 UK citizens from Lebanon during the Israel/Hezbollah conflict in 2006, and 180 stranded holiday makers from Egypt following the collapse of XL Airways UK in September 2008. In addition, he flew Rangers F.C. and Liverpool F.C. to away matches in Israel and Italy in 2007 and 2010 respectively. For the 2008-09 "Somewhere Back in Time World Tour", he piloted Iron Maiden's chartered Boeing 757, dubbed "Ed Force One", specially converted to carry the band's equipment between continents, which subsequently led to a documentary film, Iron Maiden: Flight 666. Dickinson flew "Ed Force One" again for "The Final Frontier World Tour" in 2011. For the 2016 The Book of Souls World Tour, the band upgraded to a Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet, which meant that Dickinson had to undertake type conversion to fly the aircraft. In 2014, Dickinson purchased a Fokker Dr.I triplane replica G-CDXR and joined the Great War Display Team, which re-enacts First World War air battles at airshows across the UK. CANNOTANSWER

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