Nathan Fielder, the creator, star and writer of HBO’s “The Rehearsal” called out the Federal Aviation Administration for criticizing the show’s examination of whether or not poor communication between pilots could be the cause of plane crashes.
“That’s dumb. They’re dumb,” Fielder said during a Thursday appearance on CNN, responding to a statement from the FAA that diminished his findings and claimed that all pilots must undergo specific trainings before and after they’re a licensed pilot.
Per the FAA: “The Federal Aviation Administration requires all airline crewmembers (pilots and flight attendants) and dispatchers to complete Crew Resource Management training. They must complete this training before they begin working in their official positions and complete it on a recurring basis afterward.”
In response, Fielder stated that the training the FAA is referring to is merely a slideshow presentation.
“Here’s the issue, is that, they do — I trained to be a pilot, and I’m a 737 pilot,” Fielder said. “I went through the training. 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.”
Watch the clip below:
Fielder, who was joined by aviation safety expert John Goglia, who also features in “The Rehearsal,” continued: “And they talk about some crashes that happened, but they don’t do anything that makes it stick in emotionally.” He then cited a recent crash where it was determined that communication between pilots “was sort of the issue.”
The comedian appeared on “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer” to discuss the docu-comedy series’ second season, which is centered around improving communication between pilots to prevent airline crashes. In the series, Fielder created scenarios to test his hypothesis, and it was revealed in the finale that he discreetly spent the last two years training to become a pilot himself and ultimately captained a 737 with 150 actors aboard over the Mojave Desert.
Fielder argued in the series — and further explained on CNN — that the lack of communication between pilots is oftentimes due to a subordinate co-pilot feeling uncomfortable with correcting their superior or holding them accountable.
“That’s the whole show. But I mean, it’s a human thing,” Fielder said. He then put Wolf Blitzer and co-host Pamela Brown on the spot, saying that Brown probably wouldn’t be comfortable taking Blitzer to task over something because he is her superior.
“Between you two, who would be the boss or the more — you’re Wolf Blitzer, right? Your name is first on the thing,” Fielder posited. “I’m sure Pamela, at times [when] Wolf wants to do something you don’t think is a good idea, you might not want to express that always.”
You can watch Fielder’s segment on “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer” in the video above.
