It’s fair to say that “The Rehearsal” is not the aviation safety documentary I thought we were making.

I have consulted on or participated in scores of aviation disaster and safety videos, all with a pretty consistent documentary style that I’m sure readers are familiar with. That’s the type of documentary I assumed HBO was making when I was first approached about the show. In retrospect, it’s clear that I should have asked the producers more questions in the beginning, to understand better what the show was about. (And for sure I will in the future.)

But in this case, I’m glad that I didn’t. It might have made me less willing to participate, and that would have been a missed opportunity to pursue a fresh approach to a longstanding safety problem.

Aircraft cockpit communication, the impetus for this season’s show, is what initially hooked me on participating — specifically, the authority gradient that made co-pilots reluctant to speak up when they believed their captains were making a mistake, even when those mistakes could prove to be catastrophic. While the Federal Aviation Administration and the industry had taken numerous steps to combat........

© The Hill