Metal vets Iron Maiden [ tickets ] have announced the initial round of dates for their wide-ranging 2008 world tour, an event that covers most of the first six months of the new year.

The "Somewhere Back in Time" tour--during which the band plans to mainly play material from its '80s catalog--kicks off Feb. 1 in Mumbai, India. Stops in about 30 cities around the globe have been announced so far, including the trek's first North American date, a Feb. 19 show in Los Angeles.

The only other US date currently on the group's calendar is a March 15 appearance in East Rutherford, NJ. A more extensive run of North American dates will be announced soon for May and June, according to the band's website; all North American shows confirmed so far are detailed below.

The band--which will travel close to 100,000 miles and play to over 1.5 million fans on the trek, according to promoters--will transport its 60-member crew and more than 12 tons of equipment on a specially commissioned and converted Boeing 757 decorated with Iron Maiden [ tickets ]'s logo. Even more impressively, frontman Bruce Dickinson, a qualified airline captain, will pilot the plane for over 50,000 miles on the outing.

"We had the idea last year of converting a jumbo jet into effectively what would be a flying 113-ton 'splitter bus' for touring and we have been working seriously on it ever since," Dickinson said in a press statement.

"We will be packing as much of the show into the plane as we possibly can for this first leg and intend to give the fans something very special to remember," he added. "And it allows me to combine two of my greatest passions, music and flying!"

The tour finds the group backing its latest release, last year's "A Matter of Life and Death." For its 14th official studio album, Maiden once again teamed with South African producer Kevin Shirley (Aerosmith, Journey), whom the band also enlisted (as co-producer with Steve Harris) on its previous two albums: 2003's "Dance of Death" and 2000's "Brave New World."

The album, which topped out at No. 9 in the US on The Billboard 200 chart, sold 220,000 copies worldwide upon its release, according to the band's label.