Nathan Fielder has no time to argue with the Federal Aviation Administration over commercial airline safety: He already had his mic drop moment during the second season of his hit HBO series “The Rehearsal.”
Fielder, who is the star, writer, director, and executive producer of the series, spent two years training to become a licensed commercial pilot type-rated to fly a 737. During the Season 2 finale, Fielder flew an actual 737 filled with 150 actors. (IndieWire has an explainer about just how Fielder was able to pull that off.)
However, the FAA had more to say about Fielder’s season-long arc about co-pilots not properly communicating with captains in the cockpit, in part leading to safety concerns in the air. The FAA issued a statement to CNN, which read, “The Federal Aviation Administration requires all airline crew members (pilots and flight attendants) and dispatchers to complete Crew Resource Management training.”
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The administration further claimed that there was no data to support Fielder’s belief that communication issues between pilots are a major cause of crashes. While on CNN, Fielder deemed the FAA a “dumb” organization.
“That’s dumb. They’re dumb,” Fielder said. “Here’s the issue: I trained to be a pilot. I’m a 737 pilot. 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, and they talk about some crashes that happen, but they don’t do anything that makes it stick emotionally.”
“The Rehearsal” Season 2 set out to solve the commercial aviation crisis, one role playing scenario at a time. Fielder built an entire airport that included fake pilots, and even a staged plane crash. The series returned for its second season three years after debuting in 2022. The description simply states that the show “follows one man’s journey to reduce the uncertainties of everyday life. With a construction crew, a legion of actors, and seemingly unlimited resources, Fielder helps ordinary people prepare for life’s biggest moments by ‘rehearsing’ them in carefully crafted simulations of his own design. In Season 2, the urgency of Fielder’s project grows as he decides to put his resources toward an issue that affects us all.”
