In June, a month after the season ended, the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure voted to approve the Mental Health in Aviation Act, a bipartisan bill that would encourage pilots to disclose mental health conditions, something that factored heavily into Fielder’s show. As the comedian exhibited, pilots are currently hesitant to speak out when they’re going through something for fear of losing their jobs. The new bill, however, would allocate $13.7M per year partly to hire psychiatrists and other professional counselors to help change this pattern. John Goglia, the former National Transportation Safety Board member who was featured in the show, thinks Fielder could have had something to do with it.
“After the show aired, John texted me and said that a bill that’s been stuck in the House for years about pilot mental health finally went through and was passed, and went to the Senate, and he was talking to the young staffers, and he said, ‘I think the show pushed them to [do it],'” Fielder shared during a recent Writer’s Guild panel, per Deadline. “I guess the young people make all the decisions. He’s like, ‘That’s how it works.’ Anyway, I don’t know if it did anything, but it was nice to hear. That’s the most recent update.”
Fielder has been on this particular crusade, one which saw him call the FAA “dumb” in a widely shared CNN interview, for years now. According to the trade, he started taking flying lessons before even pitching the idea to HBO—a stunt that paid off in spades in the show’s brilliant season finale. “I noticed this thing that would happen in [Canadian series Mayday] a lot. They reenact plane crashes and talk about why they happened. I started to notice this thing that was always happening, where the co-pilot would know what the issue was, but would be too afraid to or intimidated to speak up to the captain or take over the controls,” Fielder shared. “For like 10 years, I was just telling people this at parties. Then when I was thinking about the second season, I had that idea, and I thought that would be really good.” Good enough, maybe, to win him an Emmy. Even if he doesn’t, the bill passing is a pretty sweet victory.
