Nathan Fielder has confirmed that he really learned to fly a Boeing 737 to pull the bold finale of the second season of his HBO show The general test.
The series used foreign methods to explore very real problems about Co-Pilot’s ability to communicate clearly with each other.
During a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!Fielder commented on a clip of him flying a 737 in the final: “It’s me, I’m really flying that plane. It looks weird, right? But it’s real.”
He continued: “All this season of The general test Is about pilots and aviation, so doing a good job of this and really understanding pilots, I decided early on that the best way to understand them is to become one yourself.
“So I train for almost two and a half years and worked me up through private pilot, instrument, commercial, and I got a 737 type of rating, so I’m a licensed 737 pilot.”
The 42-year-old comedian continued to explain that he believes that poor communication between pilots has been a leading contributing factor in many aircraft accidents.
“That’s why I went so far as to become a 737 pilot because I wanted to demonstrate that on a regular flight where two pilots are just trying their best, the communication between co-pilots, captain and first officer can be a fight,” he explained.
He gave further details of how the last episode came together, he added: “I found someone who would rent me a 737. It’s very hard to convince someone to rent a comedian about a 737, but I found someone to do it and we chartered a real flight over the Mojave Desert. We went from the San Bernardino round to Las Vegas and looped back,
“You can see that we both try our best to communicate, and it’s a fight. I think, and this is in the show and you can see that when people look back on this ‘miracle over Mojave’ that they can see a turning point in aviation.”
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When asked by Kimmel if he can really compare the episode with the miracle at Hudson, the 2009 event landed, where Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landed a doomed Airbus A320 flight to New York’s Hudson River, saving 155 passengers, Fielder -Joked: ” On land. “
In a previous rate of The general testFielder played scenes from all over Sullenberger’s life in an episode labeled one of the “most unhinged” and “hysterical” pieces of TV ever made.