Nathan Fielder has blasted the Federal Aviation Administration in a new interview with CNN.
Fielder is behind the HBO show The Rehearsal, which used outlandish methods during its recently concluded second season to examine very real issues surrounding the ability of co-pilots to communicate clearly with one another.
The comedian, 42, joined CNN’s The Situation Room Thursday morning to discuss the show’s second season and the aviation issues it thrust into the spotlight. In addition to anchors Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown, Fielder was joined by former National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia, who also appeared on The Rehearsal.
Brown shared the FAA’s statement to CNN responding to Fielder's claims that communication issues between pilots are causing crashes, saying the FAA "requires all airline crewmembers (pilots and flight attendants) and dispatchers to complete Crew Resource Management training.” The FAA also said it isn't seeing data to support Fielder's claims.
But Fielder instantly slammed the statement as “dumb.”
“Here’s the issue: I trained to be a pilot. I’m a 737 pilot. I went through the training,” Fielder started. “The training is someone shows you a PowerPoint slide saying, ‘If you are a co-pilot and the captain does something wrong, you need to speak up about it.’ That’s all. That’s the training, and they talk about some crashes that happen, but they don’t do anything that makes it stick emotionally.”
Fielder was pleading the case for additional communication training for pilots, and Goglia agreed the need exists.
“In aviation, we've long known that communications has been an issue,” Goglia said on CNN. “And we've — we have dealt with it effectively through crew resource management. But what Nathan has uncovered was a little sliver that has fallen through the cracks and with these communications disconnect between pilots.”
The new comments come after Fielder's appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, in which he confirmed that he had genuinely spent two and a half years obtaining his license to fly a Boeing 747 for the show’s shocking season two finale.
“So I trained for almost two-and-a-half years and worked my way up through private pilot, instrument, commercial, and I got a 737 type rating, so I am a licensed 737 pilot,” he shared.
The comedian again shared his belief that poor communication between pilots has been a leading contributing factor in many plane crashes.
“That’s why I went as far as becoming a 737 pilot, because I wanted to demonstrate that on a regular flight where two pilots are just trying their best, that communication between the co-pilots, captain and first officer, can be a struggle,” he explained.
Giving further details about how the final episode came together, he added: “I found someone who would lease me a 737. It’s very hard to convince someone to lease a comedian a 737, but I found someone to do it and we chartered a real flight over the Mojave desert. We went from San Bernardino round to Las Vegas and then looped back, with cameras filming the whole time.
“You can see that we’re both trying our best to communicate, and it’s a struggle. I do think, and this is in the show, and you can see it, that when people look back at this ‘Miracle over the Mojave’, that they can see a turning point in aviation.”
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