Comedian-turned-pilot Nathan Fielder slammed the Federal Aviation Authority’s (FAA) laissez faire approach to airline safety, calling their response to the concerns raised on his HBO show “dumb.”
Fielder, who obtained a pilot’s license ahead of the latest season of HBO’s The Rehearsal, appeared on CNN Thursday to discuss commercial airline safety in the wake of a number of high-profile aviation accidents in recent months.
Fielder’s main hypothesis in the show was that poor communication between pilots in the cockpit plays a major role in plane crashes. And he also highlighted a lack of training given to pilots about the importance of building rapport with the rest of the cockpit team.
While researching commercial airline crashes, Fielder said, “I started to notice that they can always solve the technical stuff when a crash happens, they work really hard to make sure that type of accident doesn’t happen again, but for the human factor and communications, the thing that keeps happening is that there’s miscommunication between pilots.”
In response, President Trump’s FAA sent a statement to CNN in which they claimed, “The Federal Aviation Administration requires all airline crewmembers (pilots and flight attendants) and dispatchers to complete Crew Resource Management training,” and said they didn’t see any data to support Fielder’s claim that pilot communications are to blame for airline disasters.
“That’s dumb. They’re dumb,” the comedian 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.”
NATHAN FIELDER (Photo by Randy Holmes/Disney via Getty Images) Randy Holmes/Disney via Getty Images
The FAA has been embroiled in scandal after facing an unprecedented staffing crisis caused by mass layoffs spearheaded by the Trump administration followed by a high number of resignations from stressed and overworked employees.
The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) union told The Guardian in February that “several hundred” FAA workers had received termination notices, despite the agency already being understaffed and a number of deadly crashes already taking place this year.
An air traffic controller revealed to the Associated Press that fired workers included those hired for FAA radar, landing, and navigational aid maintenance.
Although Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy insists that none of the fired workers were air traffic controllers or “critical safety personnel,” a large number of air traffic controllers have chosen to resign after a number of radar failures caused mass panic, flight cancellations, and severe delays at airports across the country.
Newark Airport in New Jersey has been hit particularly hard by staffing shortages after around 400 people who held direct roles in supporting safety inspectors and airport operations were sacked in February, leading many to fear the airport has become unsafe.
In April, air traffic controllers at Newark lost radio and radar contact with planes, making them unable to communicate with pilots in the air, and at one point as few as three of the 14 recommended air traffic controllers were on duty.
