TLC Commissions One-Off Show on Plane Crash Survivors

Will feature archival footage and interviews

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/13/2009 9:00:00 AM

TLC has commissioned a show looking at the "life-changing" effects of surviving a plane crash, according to the show's producers.

UK producer Darlow Smithson Productions (Discovery Channel's Stephen Hawking's Universe) said Tuesday the cable channel has ordered the one-off doc, Plane Crash Survivors, with TLC's Sandra Brown executive producing along with Viv McGrath for Darlow Smithson.

The show will feature archival crash footage and interviews with survivors, including one of only four survivors of a mid-air collision with a mountain in Columbia, the pilots of a DC10 who helped save most of the passengers when they crash landed a plane in Sioux City, Ia., in 1989, and passengers on the US Airwaves flight that crash-landed in the Hudson last January without any loss of life.

"Plane crash survivors are members of an exclusive club none of them ever wished to join. The terrifying trauma of the crash," said McGrath in announcing the production. "[T]the feelings of guilt as to why they survived when others died; the years of recovery - are experiences that only they can truly understand. But a plane crash can also trigger a life-changing transformation in survivors' lives and their stories can inspire us all."