Being in a plane buried in sand beneath the desert may sound like your worst-ever accident scenario. But a Swiss artist is planning to offer precisely that experience to visitors to his new project in California’s Mojave Desert.

Christoph Buchel is set to bury a Boeing 727 ten meters below the surface for his Terminal project. He has already applied to the Kern County administration for a permit to use undeveloped desert land near Boron. If this is approved, the artist plans to dig a huge hole in the ground and place a 45-meter aircraft in it – then cover it with sand.

According to The Bakersfield Californian, the land for the project was purchased for $21,000, while a written-off jetliner reportedly cost around $30,000.

All that money just to bury a plane for art’s sake, I hear you say. The guy is just, well, plane mad! But that’s not all. Visitors will be able to access the jet through a tunnel.

Buchel says the idea is to give people a chance to experience geological strata from the inside through the plane’s windows.

For safety reasons all engines, fuel and other dangerous materials will be removed from the plane before installation. The interior of the passenger jet will remain, with all electrical and air conditioning systems replaced by new ones.

The project’s engineer will supervise the process of installing and covering the plane with sand and soil, to see that the pressure on the most vulnerable sections such as windows and wings does not break them.

Whether the public will enjoy this subterranean exercise in communing with nature… we’ll have to wait and see.