Astraeus Airlines

In the 2000s, the name Astraeus was known mainly to insiders: a small airline from Gatwick whose Boeings often flew under another name. Then one of its Boeing 757s in Iron Maiden livery landed at airports around the world – and the band’s singer sat in the cockpit. Astraeus was a charter airline, aircraft lessor and tour service provider in one, until it was suddenly over in November 2011. Here you will learn how the business model worked, which types the airline flew and how to recognize Astraeus in old photos.

Astraeus at a glance

Astraeus Airlines was a British charter and ACMI airline with company headquarters in Crawley, West Sussex, and an aircraft base at London-Gatwick Airport. It was named after Astraeus, the god of dusk in Greek mythology. Legally it operated as Astraeus Limited, and briefly it also appeared under the Flystar brand – which is where the callsign comes from.

Astraeus began flight operations in April 2002 with Boeing 737s. Among the founders were former employees of British World Airlines, which had collapsed shortly before, so they knew the charter business very well. The airline held a British Type A operating license, which is required for aircraft with more than 19 seats, and was registered in the IATA safety program IOSA.

In the first years, Astraeus flew package vacationers for British tour operators, in summer as in winter. From 2008, the business changed fundamentally: instead of its own charter chains, the airline leased out its aircraft with crew to other companies. From this point on at the latest, Astraeus jets were often no longer recognizable as such at all.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code 5W: appeared in flight numbers on charter flights under its own code.
• ICAO code AEU: appears in air traffic control flight plans and in archive data.
• Callsign FLYSTAR: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio – even when the aircraft was flying for a customer and carried its name on the fuselage.

With an ACMI airline in particular, the callsign is worth its weight in gold: livery and ticket then often say something different from the radio. How the code systems are structured is explained in the article Airline callsigns and their history.

The history in stages

Charter airline for tour operators

The first years were typical for a British charter airline: tour operators bought seat capacity for entire seasons, and Astraeus provided aircraft and crew. The small Boeing 737 fleet suited the medium-haul routes to the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands well. From 2004 the fleet grew, and with the larger Boeing 757-200 came a type that was ideal for leisure routes with many seats. The difference between charter and scheduled service is explained in the article Charter flights and scheduled flights.

Remarkably, Astraeus stayed at Gatwick while other charter airlines left the airport or disappeared altogether. In 2009, it was considered the only charter airline still headquartered there.

Icelandic owners and Iceland Express

On October 30, 2006, the Icelandic investment company Fons took the majority in Astraeus, and later the airline belonged entirely to the sister company Fengur. Both holdings traced back to the same main owners. The low-cost airline Iceland Express, which had its flights operated by other airlines, belonged to the same circle.

In the fall of 2008, Astraeus again took over all Iceland Express flights, initially with two Boeing 737-700s, and from 2010 with 757s as well. For spotters in Copenhagen, London or at Keflavik Airport, that meant: an aircraft with Iceland Express titles could in truth be a British-registered Astraeus jet.

2008 turning point: from charter to wet lease

In May 2008, Astraeus ended its own full-time charter and scheduled operations and concentrated on subleasing its fleet. Three variants were offered:

• Wet lease (ACMI): aircraft, complete crew, maintenance and insurance from a single source.
• Damp lease: aircraft with cockpit crew, the customer provides the cabin crew.
• Dry lease: only the aircraft, the customer takes over operations.

In addition, the business with ad hoc charters remained: Astraeus flew soccer clubs such as Manchester United and Arsenal as well as teams from the FA Cup and the Irish FAI Cup, film studios such as Disney and Warner Bros., government and military customers as well as corporate and group trips. On October 20, 2010, Bruce Dickinson personally flew FC Liverpool to the European cup match against SSC Napoli at Naples Airport. How wet leasing works in practice and how you recognize such operations is in the article Wet leasing explained.

The fleet: Boeing 737 and 757

Astraeus consistently relied on Boeing narrowbodies that had already been in service for a few years. At cessation in 2011, the average age was, depending on the source, between a good 17 and 19 years. The most important types at a glance:

Type	Period at Astraeus	Use	Spotter tip
Boeing 737-300	from 2002	Charter, later wet lease	Classic generation with CFM56
Boeing 737-500	from 2009	Wet lease	Shortest Classic variant
Boeing 737-700	from the mid-2000s	Charter, Iceland Express	Next Generation, winglets possible
Boeing 757-200	from 2004	Charter, wet lease, Ed Force One	Largest type in the fleet
Airbus A320	2011	Wet lease	Only briefly and not listed in all sources

In 2008, the fleet consisted of two 737-300s, two 737-700s and five 757-200s. In 2009, a 737-500 and another 737-700 were added. At cessation in November 2011, there were about nine aircraft – the composition is stated somewhat differently depending on the source.

Boeing 757: the workhorse

The Boeing 757-200 was Astraeus’s most important aircraft. Its combination of high seat count, range and good takeoff performance made it equally attractive for leisure flights, sports charters and long ferry flights. Toward the end, several 757s were leased to customers, according to one fleet overview including to Saudia and to the British leisure airlines Thomson and Thomas Cook Airlines. Thomson later merged into TUI Airways.

How to tell the slender 757 from the wider 767 is shown in the article Telling the Boeing 757 and 767 apart.

Boeing 737: Classic and Next Generation

With the 737, Astraeus covered two generations: the Boeing 737-300 and the short Boeing 737-500 from the Classic family as well as the more modern Boeing 737-700 of the Next Generation. The 737-700s formed the backbone of the Iceland Express flights. How to reliably tell Classic and NG apart in photos is explained in the article Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart. The manufacturer of all types except the A320 was Boeing.

Ed Force One: the Iron Maiden 757

For most aviation fans, Astraeus is inseparably linked with Ed Force One. The idea came from Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson, who flew as a captain on the 757 at Astraeus. For the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour, the band chartered an Astraeus 757 with the registration G-OJIB in 2008.

The key was the conversion into a combi aircraft: part of the cabin was converted for cargo so that band, tour crew and about twelve metric tons of equipment could travel in a single aircraft. That made countries reachable that had previously been considered logistically too complex, such as Costa Rica and Colombia. On the first leg from February to March 2008, the band covered about 50,000 miles in 45 days this way, with 23 concerts in 13 countries. The flights ran with the callsign suffix 666 – a nod to the song “The Number of the Beast,” which later also gave the documentary “Iron Maiden: Flight 666” its name.

Livery, name and second aircraft

G-OJIB got a special livery with band mascot Eddie. Fans picked the name “Ed Force One” in a contest on the band’s website. Because Astraeus customers reacted positively to the striking design, the band livery stayed on the aircraft until the end of May 2008 after the first tour phase. On the second tour phase in 2009, G-OJIB was used again.

For the Final Frontier World Tour 2011, G-OJIB was originally planned again. In fact, though, a different 757-200, G-STRX, took off on February 8, 2011 in a slightly modified Iron Maiden livery. For the Book of Souls World Tour in 2016, the band then used a former Air France Boeing 747-400, operated by another airline – Astraeus no longer existed by then. You can find more on the differences between the jumbo variants on the page for the Boeing 747-400.

Bruce Dickinson in the cockpit

That a rock star works as an airline pilot made Astraeus known far beyond the industry. Dickinson flew the 757 as captain whenever he was not on tour with the band. From September 16, 2010, he was also the airline’s marketing director. In June 2011, he also appeared in a safety video of the British aviation authority CAA on the subject of aircraft loading.

His biography also records remarkable special flights in these years: in 2006, he brought about 200 Britons out of Lebanon during the war between Israel and Hezbollah, and in September 2008, after the collapse of XL Airways, he flew 180 stranded vacationers back from Egypt. For which company these flights were run in each case, the sources do not state clearly. After the end of Astraeus, Dickinson founded the maintenance company Cardiff Aviation in Wales in 2012.

How to recognize Astraeus

Today you meet Astraeus almost only in photos and archives. Because the airline so often flew for others, attribution is trickier than with classic airlines:

• Registration: British G- registrations on 737s and 757s. The basics are explained in the article British G- registrations.
• Callsign and codes: FLYSTAR on the radio, AEU in flight data, 5W in flight numbers.
• Foreign titles: A 737 with Iceland Express titles and a G- registration points strongly to Astraeus.
• Period and place: Gatwick as home, plus leisure destinations, Keflavik and the assignment locations of the wet lease customers between 2002 and 2011.

Transition and customer liveries are a collecting field of their own. You can find tips in the article on hybrid and mixed liveries.

The end in November 2011

The ACMI business lives on contracts: if you find no customers for a season, you are left with expensive aircraft and staff. That is exactly what happened to Astraeus in the fall of 2011. There were not enough contracts for the winter, and at the same time, according to its own statements, the airline had “extremely bad luck” with technical problems on its aircraft.

On November 21, 2011, Astraeus entered administration and ceased flight operations immediately. Iceland Express had to find a replacement at short notice and rented two Airbus A320s from Holidays Czech Airlines; the Icelandic airline itself was taken over by WOW air in 2012. An overview of similar collapses is given in the article Big airline failures in Europe.

What remains

• The business model lives on: British ACMI and charter providers such as Titan Airways or Iceland’s Air Atlanta Icelandic work on a similar principle.
• Ed Force One is a legend: the Iron Maiden 757 is among the best-known special liveries of the 2000s.
• Gatwick as a charter location: other British leisure airlines of that time such as Flyglobespan or XL Airways are now history as well.

Traces of Astraeus today

You can no longer spot Astraeus live. But you can still experience the types and places that belong to its history:

Common mix-ups

• Confusing Astraeus with the callsign – FLYSTAR belonged to Astraeus, not to a separate airline called Flystar.
• Taking every Iceland Express aircraft for Icelandic – many flew with British registrations and Astraeus crews.
• Always taking Ed Force One for the same aircraft – there were two Astraeus 757s (G-OJIB, G-STRX) and later a 747 from another operator.
• Taking Astraeus for a scheduled airline – it was mainly a charter and leasing specialist.

Conclusion

Astraeus was never a big airline, but one that stays in memory. From a small Gatwick charter operator it became a flexible lessor of 737s and 757s that flew for tour operators, Iceland Express, airlines in the Middle East and soccer clubs. A single aircraft made it world-famous: the converted 757 with Eddie on the fuselage and a rock singer in the cockpit. When contracts dried up in the fall of 2011, it was over after almost ten years.