Comedian Nathan Fielder has been causing a stir in the aviation community with the latest season of his HBO show “The Rehearsal.”
The second season of the show, which wrapped up on May 25, takes a deep dive into how miscommunications in the cockpit between airline copilots and captains play a significant role in aviation accidents, using Fielder’s signature dry and absurdist humor to illuminate the issues.
Although it’s framed as a comedic docu-series, the show does hit home on some salient points, making the case that pilots should receive more robust communications training, specifically around copilots voicing their opinion when they believe the captain is making an error. The umbrella term for this type of training in the industry is Crew Resource Management (CRM).
Now, the FAA is reacting to Fielder’s theory. On Thursday, Fielder appeared on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown," where the hosts shared a statement from the FAA regarding “The Rehearsal.”
“The Federal Aviation Administration requires all airline crew members (pilots and flight attendants) and dispatchers to complete Crew Resource Management training,” the FAA statement to CNN said. “They must complete this training before they begin working in their official positions and complete it on a recurring basis afterward.”
“[The FAA] mandates all airline pilots and crew members complete interpersonal communication training, and it says it isn’t seeing the data that supports the show’s central claim that pilot communication is to blame for airline disasters,” Brown said in the segment, reading from the FAA’s statement.
Fielder had choice words for the regulatory organization. “That’s dumb. They’re dumb,” he said.
As part of the show, Fielder trained to be a certified 737 pilot and found that the FAA’s training on this matter was sorely lacking. “The training is, someone shows you a powerpoint slide saying ‘if you are a copilot and the captain does something wrong, you need to speak up about it,’” he said on CNN. “That’s all, that’s the training, and they talk about some crashes that happened. But they don’t do anything that makes it stick emotionally.”
The timing of Fielder’s show comes as aviation safety is top of mind for travelers, with several high-profile fatal crashes occurring in 2025, plus a crumbling air traffic control system that’s causing equipment outages at New Jersey’s Newark Airport, leading to many nervous fliers.
There are prominent aviation safety experts that do agree with Fielder’s take on the matter and believe the FAA should take action. “The ostrich syndrome is alive and well,” said John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member who also appeared on “The Rehearsal,” implying that federal regulators have their head in the sand about this issue. “What Nathan has uncovered is a little sliver that has fallen between the cracks with this communication disconnect between pilots,” he said in the CNN segment.
Goglia said he thinks adding a module on these types of miscommunications that primes copilots on how to speak up should be added to the FAA’s official training. He also went on to say that in his decades as an airline pilot and NTSB member, he frequently saw the scenario Fielder presented “over and over again,” and added that he plans to incorporate episodes of the show into his curriculum at Vaughn Aviation College, where he’s a professor.
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