Sully Sullenberger continues to suffer indignity after indignity at Nathan Fielder’s hands. On The Rehearsal, Fielder portrayed Sullenberger as a giant baby drinking breast milk from a puppet and later listening to Evanescence during his famous “miracle” flight. And even now that The Rehearsal is over, Fielder is still getting his shots in, this time to brag about his own 737 flight, which he’s calling “Miracle Over the Mojave.”
“Of the ‘Miracle’ flights—which are flights branded with the word ‘Miracle’ in it—people are saying this is the most significant one,” Fielder said, dressed in pilot’s attire, during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! “Miracle on the Hudson is another one,” he acknowledged, adding that he didn’t want to create “competition or anything, but I did put down my plane safely on land, so….”
Some fans may have their doubts that he did, indeed, land a 737 (or fly one at all). That comes down to Nathan Fielder’s reputation as a deadpan trickster willing to commit to the bit harder than almost anyone else alive. However, the comedian really did get his pilot’s license and insisted to Kimmel that he genuinely flew the plane with 150 passengers on board. “That’s me, I’m really flying the plane. It looks weird, right? But that’s real. We had another plane beside it,” he said. He even went so far as to not-quite-threaten anyone laughing at him in his pilot’s uniform (if you laugh at him, you’re kind of laughing at all pilots). “We are also in the cockpit and in control of the planes that you fly. So I’m not saying we would do anything bad, I’m just saying, like, we could. Just think about that. When you see pilots just remember—okay sure, you might think this [uniform] looks a little silly, I don’t know why—but we’re human beings as well.”
Fielder is willing to accept the title of hero, should anyone be willing to bestow it upon him like they have upon Sullenberger. “Us pilots, we just show up to work, and we’re just doing our job,” he said. “We’re just doing our job and these things happen and we have to deal with it, we have to land the plane safely, and bring down our passengers safely.”