The 747 has landed in Black Rock City again.

Last year, the controversial art installation was stuck for nearly a month on the playa, leaving questions as to whether it would return this year. It returned to the Burning Man event closure area on Sunday as event preparations are in full swing.

Volunteers moved the plane from its holding site on private ranch property to the playa, where it will remain through the duration of Burning Man, Aug. 25 to Sept. 2. The organization behind it says there's a solid departure plan for the aircraft as well.

Big Imagination Foundation CEO Ken Feldman on Monday said that the Bureau of Land Management and the Burning Man Project both reviewed and approved the foundation's plans to transport the plane to the playa and remove the plane post-event.

BLM officials issued a separate permit this year to the Big Imagination Foundation, though it has not posted the permit publicly. The Reno Gazette Journal sent a public records request Monday to the BLM to learn cost of the permit and conditions listed in it.

The Big Imagination Foundation paid the BLM an additional performance bond that will be returned to the foundation if the foundation meets all expectations in the permit.

Neither BLM officials nor Big Imagination Foundation organizers would disclose the cost of the permit or the bond. It is the only art piece at Burning Man that requires a separate permit, BLM spokesman Rudy Evenson said.

Impact on the playa

The plane has been one of the largest installations at the annual, 80,000-person event since 2016.

Formerly a 1985 Varig cargo aircraft that once carried passengers in Brazil, the scrap structure now serves as a daytime lounge and nightclub at Burning Man.

Last year, the camp ran into snags moving the airplane off the Black Rock Desert, from lease deals falling through to BLM officials challenging the location of the private land the camp wanted to use for storage, according to previous RGJ reports.

As volunteers tried to roll the multi-ton vehicle off the playa, it dug holes into the soft alkali dust and got stuck. Thick ruts trailed the plane's path, though the Big Imagination Foundation was able to move the plane by late September using a 1,000-foot-long path of 4-inch thick mats laid down in stages.

"The plane was moved across the mats to prevent damage to the playa and keep the plane from sinking into the soft ground," the foundation said in a statement at the time.

Laura Blaylock, a Gerlach resident and conservationist, said she's furious that the plane is returning considering the ruts the plane created in the playa last year.

"If I hadn't missed it by a few hours, I would have sat right in front of that plane," Blaylock said.

Blaylock said the BLM's core mission is to protect the Black Rock-High Rock National Conservation Area, but allowing the plane to crush desert dunes to and from its storage site is a failure of that.

"Somebody said, 'How else would they get it out?' Not my problem. Get a helicopter," Blaylock said.

Evenson said in an email that part of the cost of the permit will cover the cost of replanting and then fencing the dune area through which the plane passed while being brought onto public land.

The permit stipulates that the vehicle will be taken off the playa via paved road after the event, Evenson added.

Threats received over plane

Feldman told the Reno Gazette Journal last month that the media attention surrounding the plane's stalled removal from the event area last year led to the plane and foundation both receiving threats.

In recent months, he spent a fortune, he said, to post a security guard to watch the plane. The foundation also paid to cloak the plane in camouflage tarp.

Feldman also said there was a Facebook group that was aimed at destroying the plane.

"We have people threatening to burn down the property," Feldman said. "We never abandoned the plane, we always had a plan."

Feldman was unavailable to speak Monday, though he said he was on his way out to the plane.

The Big Imagination Foundation is not disclosing whether the 747 will be returning to the private ranch property after Burning Man 2019.

Jenny Kane covers arts and culture in Northern Nevada, as well as the dynamic relationship between the state and the growing Burning Man community. She also covers the state's burgeoning cannabis industry (Check out her podcast, the Potcast, on iTunes.) Support her work in Reno by subscribing to RGJ.com right here.