Plan for Staged TV Jumbo Jet Crash in Desert Is Scratched

Facing mounting criticism from environmentalists, government officials and even the Marine Corps, the Fox Broadcasting Co. has bailed out on its plan to stage a plane crash in the Mojave Desert on live TV, a company spokesman said Friday.

Fox had contracted a reality TV company and an aviation effects team to produce an hour-long special called “Jumbo Jet Crash: The Ultimate Safety Test,” in which a remote-controlled passenger jet would be slammed into a dry lake bed near Joshua Tree National Park.

Initially, the crash was scheduled to air during the November sweeps rating period, but because of the stunt’s technical complexity the show was pushed back to February.

Now, Fox says, the crash will never happen.

“We have no plans of doing that special,” network spokesman Joe Earley said. “It was an idea we had in development, but it’s not going to happen now.”

Fox spent $250,000 in preliminary work on the project, according to the aviation effects team. Earley declined to say why Fox pulled out of the show.

But Mike Patlin, head of the aviation team working with Fox, said the Oct. 31 crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 was a key factor in Fox’s decision. That crash killed 217 people.

“The Fox people told me that they didn’t think this show was appropriate so close to the EgyptAir crash,” Patlin said.

But proximity to a major air disaster crash wasn’t the only hurdle the show faced.

As soon as the crash proposal was made public in September, environmentalists and officials with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management voiced strong objections. The crash could endanger desert wildlife, including rare desert tortoises and bighorn sheep, officials said.

Last month, commanders at the Marine Corps training center near Twentynine Palms sent the Federal Aviation Administration a letter criticizing the crash proposal as reckless.

The FAA has been reviewing the project for three months, and FAA officials last week said they were still studying its feasibility. The plan called for a pilot and a crew of three to take off from Mojave Airport, fly 100 miles east across a sparsely populated area of desert and jump out. The plane would then be crashed via remote control into a dry lake bed on the grounds of a salt mine.

At one point the aviation team tried to enlist American Airlines and NASA to participate in the project to give the show a veneer of scientific legitimacy. Both organizations said no.

Despite these setbacks, Patlin said he hasn’t given up on the crash concept.

“Once the EgyptAir crash falls off the front pages, we may be able to do this show,” he said. “And if Fox doesn’t want it, we’ll shop it around to another network. I mean, who wouldn’t want to watch a live plane crash on TV?”