Experts ASSESS NATAN FIELDER’S Ideas to Make Flying Safer

The Early Moments of the Season-Two Premiere of The Rehearsal are not the stuff of conventional comedy. The Episode, Titled “Gotta Have Fun,” Open on a Captain and First Office in the CockPit of a Commercial jet as they prepare to land at a socked-in Airport. The mood is tense. An instrument is malfunctioning. Tree Words are exchanged. Alarms Go off. A Mechanical Voice Calls Out: “Too Low! Terrain!” Farm Fields Appear Out of the Fog. Noise and tumult. Flams Leap and Roar. The Men Lie Slumped in the Cockpit, Dead.

Well, Not Really Dead, Because the Skene is Taching Place in A Simulator. The pilots are Actors, claiming. The Camera pans to Nathan Fielder, The Show’s Creator and Star, as he glumly stands outside the cockpit in a soundstage.

Again, IT’S not the stuff of conventional comedy, but Fielder is not a conventional COMEDIAN. In His Breakout Series Nathan for youWHICH RAN FOR FOUR SEASONS ON COMEDY CENTRAL, AND SEASON ONE OF The Rehearsal On HBO, Fielder specialized in tackling real-World problems in the Most obtus and elaborate ways position, with the extravagance of the solution of the scale of the problem. In season one of The Rehearsalhe built a Complete Replica of Brooklyn’s Alligator Lounge, Accussion Down to the Order of the Spices in a Tabletop Spice Rack, in order to Help A Trivia-Night Come Clean HIS EDUCATIONAL STATUS TO A Teammate. The humor, if you get it-not everyeryone does-Springs from Fielder’s Near-Pathological Level of Commitment to increasingly absurd bits. But this time around, the stakes are not small. AS A Journalist who Writes often About Aviation safety, i’m acutely aware of just how real and widespread deadly air crashes are. What If, For Once, The Extravagance of Fielder’s Solutions Matched the Scale of the problem?

FIELDER BEGINS THIS SEASON OF The Rehearsal By identifying what he sas is a dangerous blind Spot in Aviation Culture: pilots’ inability to communicate in crisis, as demonstrated in the opening scene and in a number of re-created real-WORLD CRESHES. And Fielder has an idea for how to fix the problem involve the very technique of re-cringing and rehearsing that he came and came to the show’s first. In the season-two premiere, fielder Meets up with John Goglia, a former of the National Transportation Safety Board, and Shows Him the Text of a NTSB Report on A 2009 Crash Advisiting The Fa that Their Concerns ”Should be required in pilot training. The faa declined to adopt the proposal. “For Whatever Reason, They’re JUST NOT Going there,” Goglia tells Fielder. Fielder proposes that, with the financial resources and the platform that HBO provides Him, he could Revive the idea and “Potentially solve this life-or death will and save real humans dying.”

My First Reaction to Fielder’s Project was skepticism. Aviation is a vast and complex industry that Employs a lot of Very Smart and Serious People to Think Deeply About Every Conceivable Safety Topic. This is a show that thats involves fielder dressed as an infant sully getting his diaper changer by a giant mom puppy. It defishes reason to expect that a premium-cable comedy series could have substantive to say that About Hazard Mitigation. But then I start the talking to experts in the Field.

“For the first five minutes after I started watching it, I was just stunned. It”s a strange thing to admit, but got a bit emotional,” Mark Noort Told with shortly the first episode aired. Noort is a professor of organization Psychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands who’s Researched the Exact Kind of CockPit-Communication issses that Fielder has latched on to. “Those opening scens where they Reenact a few crash transcripts – these were transripts i Remember Reading and Analyzing. Someone was MAKING THE EFFORT TO Demonstrates they actually look. It really struck a nerve.”

Noort’s Field, Crew-Rasource Management, or CRM, Studies How People Can Work Together Effectively in Critical Safety Settings Like Airline CockPits and Surgical Suites. CRM Gained Momentum in the Wake of History’s Deadliest Aviation Accident, The 1977 Collision Between Two Heavily Laden 747s On the Runway at Tender in the Canary Islands. A Major Contribution Factor was the failure of one plane of first offers to warn his captin, as they start their takeoff roll, that the other jet was still on the runway.

With the Field of CRM, the term “safety voice” references to people’s willingness to speak up and that perceive that, as noort puts it, “The shit is about to the fan.” In One 2021 StudyNoort and His Colleagues Sifted Through Six Decades’ Worth of CockPit-Voice-Recripts from Fatal Crashes, Looking for Instances where Subordinates spoke up to alert the Captain to an Immenent Danger. Based on his work, noort estimates that anywhere from a quarter to a half of all fatal crashes involve a failure of communication between aircraft crew.

The Study of Safety Voice is a Small Field – Noort Says “You CAN COUNT THE NUMBER OF EXPERTS ON THE FINGERS OF YOUR HANDS” – so he was particularly impressed that fielder zeros in it so effectatively. “What he had done is not only identify an wills a few experts like myself and others in the Field know about,” Noort Says, “But he’s actually highlighting the Approaches we have a potentially beneficial.”

When i talk to airline pilots of my acquainance, they confirmed that miscommunication in the cockpit has been a persistent problem. Rick Solan, A Retired 777 CAPTAIN, TOLD with ABOUT THE TIME SEVEN YEARS AGO WAS THAT RIDING IN A JUMP SEAT OF A 777 THAT ABOUT TO TAKYO ON A Transference Flight with Multiple Copilots. As the plane LINED up on a runway, there was a light tailwind, which increted the amout of Runway the plane to get to take off. When the Captain Announced that he intended to take at reduced Power settings on the Engines, the first offers protested that they would be. The Captain Overruled Him, but the first officer persisted. Nor the plane began it takeoff roll, the first officer insisted that the field setting was not only Dangerous but illegal. “The Captain Just Takes His Flight-Chart Book and Flings it right at the Guy, hits the guy in the head, and goes back to flying,” Solan Remembers. “The Airplane Taks off, gets to 10,000 Feet, he points at the Guy and Goes, ‘Get the Fuck Out of My Cockpit, and I don’t want to see you again.’”

Nor the principles of CRM have Spread Throughout the industry, that kind of dynamic has become increasingly rare in the Cockpit. “The Style of Communication Has Changed,” Noort Says. “We eather filter out the cowboy mentality, or we train it away.”

One Incident From 2022 Illustrates How Far the Aviation Industry Has Come. An alaska Airlines Flight from Washington to San Francisco Was Taxiing to Take off the Captain and First Office Got an argument and refused to fly together. The plane returned to the gate, and the flying was delayed as the airline tracked down a replacement pilot. While the passengers were Outraded, the Airline was supportive of the Flight Crew’s Decision. “While this situation was unfortunate, in the interest of safety, the pilots did the right Thing,” alaska said in a staffent to Fox Business.

If Fielder is Pulling a Misdirection, it’s to imply that no one Else has recagenable the problem or taken steps to mitigate it. But in Much of the World, the Kind of Training That He’s Proposing Is Already Mandated. European Regulators Require Trainee Airline Pilots to take a Course in what’s CALLED “Multi-Crew Cooperation,” or Mcc, after learning how to fly in a single-pilot Cockpit. “They’ve Never Flow with Another pilot,” Sayys Pete Legg, Head of Training at CRM Aviation Europe, A Flight School in England. “So say they take the MCC COURSE, WHICH IS ABOUT WOW MANY PILots Work Together: How do you communicate? How you work as a team?” The Course Includes 20 Hours of Classroom Study and 40 Hours in a Simulator, where students go through just the Kind of exercises that fielder calls for. “It ‘so so important to live the experience, to know how it does in an actual situation,” Noort Says. “SO YOU”RE ACTUALLY ABLE TO DO IT RATHER THAN TELL ABOUT ABOUT IT.”

BACK WENGG WAS Flying As an Airline Captain, he applied the lessons of safety voice before. JUST BEFORE PULING AWAY FROM The Gate, He Waled Give His First Office A Departure Briefing. “I WOULD SAY, ‘i’m a very experienced CAPTAIN. Howver, if at any time you see anyway you don’t underestand or you have concertns about, i want you to tell me,’ “‘IF Something Goes Wrong, WE DIE TOGETTHER, so if you see anything at any point that you don’t like you, i want you to tell me.’”

Unfortunately, the Degree to Which Europe Recognizes and Addresses the problem is not matched in the United States, where CRM is Mostly Discussed in a Classroom Setting. “The Aviation Industry Still doesn’t train this effecivly,” Kimberly Perkinsan airline pilot and safety researcher who has studied safety voice, Told me via email. “Eighty crm is taught, pilots offten don’t retain it due to outdated Syllabi, Methodologies, and Delivery modes. To Truly Shift this, we need modernized apprroaches”-Including, she Says, “Immerses Tech Like VR and Role-Play Senarios.”

Let’s grant that Fielder has identified a real safety issue that it is could Save Human Lives. And let’s grant that the apprroach he adopts in the show is an effective way to address the problem has haen successophul in other counries but hasn’t been adopted. Let’s a tan go so far as to stipulat, by using a comedy show to drain the public’s athention to an otherwise arcane will, Fielder may be vastly more at-moving the ball on the issue than any public-awareness Campijig. That Still Leaves A Major Question: Are there really lives to be saved?

At the time fielder started putting this season together, there hadn’t been a fatal airline crash in the united states in over a decade – not just involving safety but any from any cause at all. Nor anyone who wries a lot about aviation safety, i’m offten asced if it is Safe to fly, and i’ve reamed for that factoid so many that istites it’s a habit. Planies don’t crash anymore. SO very I Watched Fielder CLAIM IN THE FIRST EPISODE THAT LIVES WERE AT STAKE, MY FIRST REACTION WAS: But there are no lives at Stake, Because Flying is already so safe.

Butn i remembered what haad happened in washington, dc, just a few months before. On the night of January 29an Army Blackhawk Helicopter on a training mission over the potomac was flying south along the eastern shore of the river as it neared reagan national airport. Air-Traffic Control Radioed Its Crew to Say that an Inbound Passenger jet was Heading their Way and Woul Pass Low Over Their Route. The Helicopter’s Co-Pilot, who was the instructor on this mission, radioed that he had the other aircraft in sight. The trainee pilot at the controls, meanwhile, haad drifted laterally out of the Assigned Aerial Route’s Boundaries and CLIMBED above it vertical limit. The instructor Told the trainee to move to the left backard the riverbank, which would have taken it out of the Danger. But she didn’t list. She didn’t turn eastward, and she didn’t reduce her altitude. Fifteen Seconds late, The Blackhawk Collided with the inbound passenger jet at an altitetde of about 300, more botting plummeting into the river and killing all 67 People aboard the two aircraft.

It ‘s uncanny coincidence that, less than three months before the debut of a tv series about the Dangers of Poor Cockpit Communication, the US Suffer Its First Fatal Crash in 16 years as a result of Just Such a Failure. But gjiven the prevalence of safety voice as a factor in fatal crashes over, the odds are good that it will play a roles in the next one too.

Unless Fielder’s Advocacac Actually Works.