Nathan Fielder Slams FAA Response to ‘The Rehearsal’ Plane Crash Findings: ‘They’re Dumb’ and Training Is Inadequate

Nathan Fielder, the mastermind behind HBO’s “The Rehearsal,” slammed the Federal Aviation Administration during a recent segment on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

The comedian-turned-pilot appeared on the network on Thursday to discuss the series, which put a spotlight on commercial airline safety. Fielder’s hypothesis going into the second season was that co-pilots were not able to establish honest lines of communication with the captain in the cockpit, which leads to co-pilots feeling unable to question their superiors if they believed something was wrong during the flight. To prove his point, Fielder established a series of social simulations, and the season finale ended with him actually getting his pilot’s license and successfully flying a 737 filled with 150 people.

The FAA responded to Fielder’s ideas via CNN, writing that, “The Federal Aviation Administration requires all airline crewmembers (pilots and flight attendants) and dispatchers to complete Crew Resource Management training,” and also saying that they’re not seeing data that lines up with Fielder’s belief that communication issues are a major cause of crashes.

“That’s dumb. They’re dumb,” Fielder said in response. “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.”

Watch the full segment below.