Mayday, entitled Air Crash Investigation in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom, Asia, and some European countries, and Air Emergency, Air Disasters and Mayday: Air Disaster in the United States, is a Canadian documentary television program examining air crashes, near-crashes, hijackings, bombings, and other disasters. Mayday uses re-enactments and computer-generated imagery to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to each disaster. In addition, survivors, aviation experts, retired pilots, and crash investigators are interviewed, to explain how the emergencies came about, how they were investigated, and how they might have been prevented. Cineflix started production on, with a CDN $2.5 million budget. The program premiered on Discovery Channel Canada on 3 September 2003. Cineflix secured deals with France 5, the Discovery Channel, Canal D, TVNZ, the Seven Network, the Holland Media Group, and the National Geographic Channel to take Mayday in 144 countries and 26 languages. The series was received well by critics and nominated for a number of awards. In 2010, Sharon Zupancic won a Gemini Award for her work on the season 9 episode, "Lockerbie Disaster", about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. A UNSW senior lecturer, Raymond Lewis, conducted a study on teaching strategy loosely based on the series. Lewis's results indicated using the strategy had "a positive effect on learning outcomes."
Hallmarks
The series features re-enactments, interviews, eyewitness testimony, computer-generated imagery, and, in nearly all of the episodes, voice actor readings of cockpit voice recorder transcripts to reconstruct the sequence of events for the audience. Several passengers and crew members are picked and actors/actresses play the role of those passengers and crews throughout the flight, usually starting from boarding of the flight. The flight routines in the air traffic control, cockpit, and cabin are recreated on screen starting from departure up to the moment of the emergency. At the moment of the emergency, external views of the aircraft from different angles are recreated to show the effect and what had happened to the aircraft. The responses and reactions of the passengers, crews, and air traffic control personnel leading up to the eventual crash or emergency landing are then recreated. All scenes in the cockpit and air traffic control centres are recreated using the actual script obtained from the cockpit voice recorder of the aircraft and other recordings made at the time. Throughout the episodes, the victims are interviewed, adding further information about the cases as it relates to them personally. In addition, aviation experts, retired pilots, and investigators are interviewed on the evidence and explain how these emergencies came about and how they could have been prevented.
Production and distribution
Cineflix started production for Mayday on, with a CDN$2.5 million budget, after Channel Five commissioned the six-part one-hour series. To keep the costs down, most of the production was kept at Cineflix's offices in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While in production, the series was sold to France 5, Discovery Channel and Canal D. On, Cineflix announced that it had sold the series to TVNZ, the Seven Network, and the Holland Media Group. Later that year on, a month before the airing of the first season, Cineflix announced that it had secured a major international deal with National Geographic Channel to take Mayday to 144 countries and 26 languages. In 2011, Smithsonian Networks aired Season 5, renamed to Air Disasters, making it the first time in the United States that Mayday had aired on a channel other than National Geographic. On 25 January 2012, Cineflix Rights announced that it would be selling Seasons 8, 9 and 11 to Smithsonian Networks. On 28 March 2014, Cineflix Rights announced a deal with Smithsonian Networks to air seasons 3, 4 and 13.
Episodes
As of March 2020, a total of 180 episodes of Mayday have been aired, including five Science of Disaster specials and three Crash Scene Investigation spin-offs, which do not examine aircraft crashes. The "series breakdown" page on Cineflix's website lists a 20th season consisting of ten 60-minute episodes scheduled for release in 2019.
Reception
The series has been well received by critics. Franck Tabouring from DVD Verdict said "It's a well-produced show with plenty of compelling information about tragic accidents, telling how some people survived and others didn't." The senior lecturer of the University of New South Wales, Raymond Lewis, conducted a study on teaching strategy loosely based on the series. The study was done with prospective pilots studying the "Aircraft Systems for Aviators" undergraduate course by including "study of air accidents and incidents associated with aircraft systems." The results of the study showed "the use of air accidents and incident scenarios had a positive effect on learning outcomes."
Awards and nominations
Overall, the series has been nominated for nine awards, winning two, both for film editing.
