Within the season finale of the HBO present The Rehearsal, comic Nathan Fielder flew a totally loaded Boeing 737 to check his novel concept that deadly aircraft crashes might be prevented by creating higher interpersonal communication between pilots and first officers.
In step with the present’s premise, Fielder needed to make his dry-run take a look at as near a real-life industrial airliner flight as doable—full with a cabin stuffed with passengers.
This naturally required Fielder to acquire a industrial pilot’s license and purchase (with HBO’s cash) a 737.
Neither is especially straightforward, however it’s comparatively easy from a authorized perspective. Flying with passengers, nonetheless, required Fielder to interact in an elaborate workaround of federal rules that have been, satirically sufficient, adopted because the final shiny concept to stop aircraft crashes.
Following the Colgan Air catastrophe in 2009, when a industrial airliner crashed in New York, killing 50 individuals, Congress handed laws requiring that pilots have 1,500 hours of flight time earlier than qualifying for the Air Transport Pilot license. The earlier requirement had been 250 hours.
As detailed within the present, this created an issue for Fielder, who, within the run-up to the filming of his first 737 flight, had solely accrued just a few hundred hours of flight time.
To get round this hurdle, Fielder exploited a loophole within the regulation that allowed him to hold employed actors posing as paying clients.
Individuals can argue about whether or not Fielder’s concept of aircraft crashes, and his proposed repair of getting pilots and co-pilots act out a quick scene of them bluntly confronting one another earlier than flights, will really enhance aviation security.
Rep. Steven Cohen (D–Tenn.), the rating member of the Home’s Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation, was hilariously uninterested within the concept throughout his assembly with Fielder earlier within the season.
In a current Wall Road Journal article, pilots’ and aviation specialists’ evaluation of Fielder’s concept ranged from minimally supportive to brazenly disdainful. Many individuals interviewed by the Journal confused that pilots already do quite a lot of role-playing and situational coaching to enhance in-flight communication.
What may be mentioned for Fielder’s concept is that it might be a minimum of as efficient because the 1,500-hour rule (which is to say, by no means) and far more cost effective.
No different nation on this planet requires airline pilots to rack up as a lot flight time because the U.S. at the moment does.
Neither the Federal Aviation Administration (which regulates aviation security) nor the Nationwide Transportation Security Board (which investigates crashes) has discovered any relationship between the 1,500-hour rule and improved security.
(The 2 pilots within the Colgan catastrophe notably had over 1,500 hours of expertise every.)
Critics cost that the 1,500-hour rule reduces security by forcing pilots to spend limitless hours performing routine flights on the expense of time spent coaching in additional productive simulators.
Regional airways complain that it is made recruiting pilots way more troublesome, resulting in a scarcity of pilots and lowered regional airline service.
However, efforts to reform the 1,500-hour rule have run into concerted opposition from the nation’s major pilots’ union, the Air Line Pilots Affiliation (ALPA), and their Democratic allies in Congress. President Donald Trump’s pending nominee for head of the FAA, Bryan Bedford, has confirmed exceptionally controversial due to his personal pushback towards the regulation.
Gary Leff, who writes the View From the Wing weblog, suggests crass self-interest motivates ALPA’s help for the 1,500-hour rule. The regulation makes it more durable to grow to be a pilot and, subsequently, helps push up pilots’ wages.
ALPA has been sharply essential of Fiedler’s personal proposed security enhancements, saying in an announcement to the Journal that crew communications coaching is “constructed on many years of analysis, coaching, and real-world expertise—not fictional TV exhibits or comedy routines.”
As off-the-wall as Fielder’s concept is likely to be, it is not inherently extra ridiculous than the ineffective hours regulation that ALPA has spent a lot time defending.
