Nathan Fielder flies full Boeing 737 plane by dodging autism diagnosis

Nathan Fielder is taking to the skies — and sticking the touchdown.

After 5 episodes interrogating airline security and pilot interpersonal dynamics, the Nathan for You mastermind revealed that he acquired his pilot’s license in Sunday’s season 2 finale of The Rehearsal.

The super-sized episode reveals Fielder studying to fly over the course of two years.

“When I first began this project, I had decided there was no better way to understand pilots than to become one myself,” Fielder says through voiceover at the start of the ep. “But it became clear very quickly that I was not a natural at this. Especially when it came to landing the plane.”

The comic says that the majority aspiring pilots sometimes are permitted to fly solo after simply 10 to 30 hours of supervised flying, however it took him seven months and over 120 hours earlier than he started touchdown planes to his instructors’ satisfaction.

“I was apparently such an abnormal case that they started passing me around to different instructors in an effort to diagnose what was going on with me,” he explains.

Ultimately, Fielder efficiently obtained his pilot’s license, which allowed him to arrange the finale’s central stunt: flying a commercial-size plane filled with passengers in an effort to simulate the cockpit dynamics of a typical industrial flight. 

“No one sees all the nuances of communication in there, how subtle it is, the disconnects,” Fielder tells John Goglia, the previous Nationwide Transportation Security Board member with whom he consulted on earlier episodes. “No one knows what’s happening. What I’m thinking is: a real flight in a 737 with real passengers at 25,000 feet, and for the first time, cameras in the cockpit for the entire time — and I know I can get them in there because I will be the pilot.”

Fielder explains that regardless of not having the everyday 1,500 hours of flight time sometimes required to grow to be a industrial pilot, he is concocted a plan to fly a airplane filled with passengers.

With simply round 280 hours of flight time earlier than he makes an attempt the stunt, Fielder particulars the loophole that enables him to present it a whirl.

“You can go private pilot, instrument, commercial — you can go right to a 737 type rating, and if you’re not technically working for an airline — so there’s a loophole, right?” he asks Goglia.

“That’s correct,” Goglia responds. “But you’re not gonna fly passengers with that.”

Fielder anticipates that response and has already circumvented that challenge by recruiting his personal set of passengers. “Well, you can’t fly paying passengers, but if the plane is filled with actors, you can do it,” he says.

Goglia confirms that his technique ought to work. “Yep. That’s right,” he says. “There is a loophole for that.”

The comic undergoes Boeing 737 coaching in Henderson, Nev., and secures a used 737 for the massive act. A number of days earlier than the flight, Fielder fills out a medical assessment type as a part of the pre-flight protocol.

“If you lie on this form, it’s a felony offense, with a maximum sentence of five years in prison,” he says as he lingers on a yes-or-no query that asks if he has “mental disorders of any sort: depression, anxiety, etc.”

Fielder says, “I’ve never been officially diagnosed with anxiety, but I’ve definitely felt the emotion. A lot actually. And I’ve been feeling it for months about this upcoming flight. Also, this word et cetera at the end of the sentence confused me. What else did they mean by et cetera?”

The comic then goes to a physician “to be sure I was representing my current state of health accurately,” and receives an fMRI scan that he is advised can detect a variety of psychological and neurological situations, together with nervousness, schizophrenia, and autism. Fielder asks the physician particularly about autism, because the earlier episode, “Washington,” reveals him struggling to appropriately reply questions as a part of an autism analysis take a look at and has a robust subtextual undercurrent suggesting that he may need undiagnosed autism.

Fielder is then dissatisfied when the fMRI technician tells him that he will not have the ability to obtain the outcomes of his scan for at the very least two weeks, which suggests they will not be prepared in time for the flight.

“I found a thread where someone posted that their friend was a regional first officer who was just diagnosed with autism,” he explains as he appears over a Reddit submit. “In the responses, all the pilots were perplexed as to why he would get tested in the first place. They said you can lose your license by disclosing something like this. I mean, with the knowledge I had, I’m fit to fly. So I guess I’m fit to fly.”

Fielder instantly addresses the digital camera to elucidate why he desires to make the flight. “I’m trying to demonstrate how hard it can be for any pilot to say what they’re thinking in a cockpit environment, and this dangerous phenomenon that leads to planes crashing, I truly believe happens in some form on every single airline flight,” he says.

He explains, “The second I see my copilot thinking something he’s not saying, you’re gonna get to see that, and then I’m gonna quickly jump in and ask him about how he’s feeling so he can share that with me and be comfortable sharing that, and nothing will be left unspoken.”

After filling the airplane with actors, a lot of whom are recognizable from earlier episodes, the comic efficiently handles the takeoff, and explains that the flight will final round two hours and 10 minutes, and can merely take the passengers from San Bernardino Worldwide Airport to the airspace across the Nevada border, then flip round and land in San Bernardino once more.

The flight continues with no hitch, and Fielder makes an attempt to open the traces of communication along with his copilot, Aaron, by repeatedly asking him if all the pieces is okay. It additionally seems that the comic has deliberately engineered circumstances that made Aaron uncomfortable by commissioning a separate airplane with a digital camera crew to fly in shut proximity to the 737 to movie the cockpit from the surface.

Fielder later asks Aaron to take part in an performing train he is developed that he hopes will encourage honesty amongst copilots, suggesting they play characters named “First Officer Blunt” and “Captain Allears,” who’re glorious at giving and receiving trustworthy suggestions.

After introducing the thought, Aaron discloses that Fielder forgot to retract the airplane’s flaps throughout takeoff. “You can tell me in the moment if I forget anything,” Fielder responds. “I love knowing what I do wrong.”

Fielder efficiently lands the airplane, and his passengers applaud his piloting abilities after departing the plane.

Within the finale’s penultimate scene, the winner of Fielder’s pretend singing competitors present, Wings of Voice, sings Evanescene’s “Bring Me to Life” because the comic watches from a distance. As she performs, Fielder checks his cellphone and discovers a voicemail from the physician’s workplace. The transcription of the message reads, “Hi good morning it’s Dr. Jordan’s office calling we have the results of your FM RI scans please give us a call set up a time to discuss your test results thank you…”

Then, in maybe the present’s most stunning second, Fielder deletes the voicemail, suggesting that he intends to disregard the outcomes of the scan in the event that they reveal any situations which may intervene along with his piloting. He is totally transformed to the willful ignorance that he realized some pilots preserve in an effort to hold their licenses and jobs — thus personally demonstrating how pilots are implicitly discouraged from being utterly trustworthy about their psychological and emotional states.

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Within the season’s last scene, Fielder reveals that he is continued piloting empty 737s as a aspect gig, explaining that the job typically takes him to rural Ecuador to fly the decommissioned planes over the Amazon rainforest.

“For some reason, they trusted me,” he says. “I was one of two pilots in the cockpit, and sometimes, when they’d be on a bathroom break, it was just me in there, flying over the Atlantic Ocean for hours until the welcoming sands of Namibia come into view.” 

Fielder continues: “They only let the smartest and best people fly a plane of this size. And it feels good to know that. No one is allowed in a cockpit if there’s something wrong with them. So if you’re here, you must be fine.”

All six episodes of The Rehearsal season 2 are streaming on Max.