| Mayday | |
|---|---|
 CGI of Japan Airlines Flight 123 from Season 3 Episode 3 |
|
| Also known as | Air Crash Investigation; Air Emergency |
| Genre | Documentary |
| Created by | Cineflix |
| Narrated by | Gaston Lepage (French-Canadian version) |
| Country of origin |  Canada |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 4 (fifth in production) |
| No. of episodes | 35 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 45-50 Minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | National Geographic Channel; Discovery Channel Canada |
| Original airing | 2003 |
Mayday (also known as Air Emergency in the United States, and Air Crash Investigation in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world) is a documentary television programme produced by Cineflix in Canada. It is aired on Discovery Channel Canada and the National Geographic Channel. This documentary investigates many air crashes in modern history after the introduction of the black box flight recorders. It reveals events that led up to each disaster, the causes of the accidents and the measures recommended in the report by the NTSB or the investigating Commission to prevent a similar incident happening again. It features re-enactments, interviews, testimony, computer-generated imagery, and in some episodes, cockpit voice recordings to reconstruct the sequence of events to the audiences. As of February 2007, four seasons of programs have been produced. For season 4, the series received an updated title sequence and look.
Contents |
Name and versions
As there are many different names to the series, there is some confusion over the proper name of the series. The program was originally produced in Canada under the name Mayday. However, viewers also refer to this series as Air Crash Investigations while National Geographic Channel does not officially use the final s.[1] There are small differences to the show as released to different regions. This includes the use of a British narrator, titling, and different theme music. In Australia the first season of the show was aired as Mayday whereas the following seasons were aired as Air Crash Investigations (with the plural of 'Investigation' used both in titles and voice-overs). It is presumed that this is the same for other English-speaking nations outside the US. Furthermore, this program, along with the similar series Blueprint for Disaster, for a time were typically billed together as Disaster Detectives on Discovery Channel Canada. It consisted of a short 10-second clip of various scenes, shown before the show. The Seven Network in Australia sometimes re-brands air disaster episodes from Seconds From Disaster with the Air Crash Investigations name captions and titles.
Episodes & Format
- Further information: List of Mayday episodes
Several passengers and crew members (whether they survived the accident or not) of the accident aircraft are picked and actors/actresses play the role of those passengers and crews throughout the accident flight usually starting from boarding of the flight. The flight routines in the air traffic control, cockpit and cabin would be recreated on screen starting from departure up to the moment of the accident. At the moment of the accident, external view of the aircraft from different angles would be recreated to show the effect and what had happened to the aircraft. The responses and reactions of the passengers, crews and air traffic control after the accident had happened leading up to the eventual crash or emergency landing are then recreated. All the scenes in cockpit and air traffic control centres are recreated using the actual script obtained from the cockpit voice recorder of the accident aircraft. The rescue and recovery effort and the investigations process is then recreated in details, showing how the aircraft parts, the flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders are recovered and examined, how the pieces are related together to maintenance records, initial design, training procedures, etc. to draw the final conclusion. Surviving passengers and crews or surviving relatives and friends of deceased passengers are interviewed throughout each episode. Investigators, from NTSB in most cases, involved in the subsequent accident investigations are interviewed to explain the flow of the investigations and how the conclusion and subsequent recommendations are made. Each episode usually ends with a short interview with one of the survivors (or a relative of a deceased) to summarize their experience and how they feel.
Broadcasters
See also
- List of National Geographic Channel programs
- Seconds from Disaster
- Seismic Seconds
- Blueprint for Disaster
