 The original idea was written by Jeffrey Reddick as a spec script for The X @-@ Files in order to get a TV agent . " I was actually flying home to Kentucky and I read a story about a woman who was on vacation and her mom called her and said , ' Don ’ t take the flight tomorrow , I have a really bad feeling about it . ’ She switched flights and the plane that she would have been on crashed , " said Reddick . " I thought , that ’ s creepy — what if she was supposed to die on that flight ? " Building on his idea , Reddick wrote script and got an agent , but never submitted the script to The X @-@ Files after a colleague at New Line Cinema suggested he write it as a feature film . One of the biggest misconceptions about the project is that it was based on the real @-@ life disaster of TWA Flight 800 that occurred in 1996 . Like in the movie , the TWA disaster involved a Boeing 747 that exploded after take @-@ off from JFK International Airport in New York en route to Paris . The TV spec script for The X @-@ Files however , was actually written in 1994 . 
