Mayday (TV series)

Hallmarks

The series features re-enactments, interviews, eyewitness testimony, computer-generated imagery, and in nearly all of the episodes, cockpit voice recordings to reconstruct the sequence of events to the audiences. Several passengers and crew members (whether they survived the incident or not) 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 the scenes in 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 or relatives and friends of victims are interviewed adding some more information about the cases with their relatives. 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 13 August 2002 (2002-08-13), 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 2 June 2003 (2003-06-02), Cineflix announced that it had sold the series to TVNZ, the Seven Network and the Holland Media Group. Later that year on October 10 (10-22), 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 USA 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 (23 episodes) to Smithsonian Networks. On 28 March 2014, Cineflix Rights announced a deal with Smithsonian Networks to air seasons 3, 4 and 13 (34 episodes).

Episodes

As of 13 February 2017, a total of 140 episodes of Mayday have aired, including 5 Science of Disaster specials and 3 Crash Scene Investigation spin-offs, which do not examine aircraft crashes. As of August 2016, the "series breakdown" page on Cineflix's website lists a 17th season consisting of ten 60-minute episodes scheduled for release in 2017.

Reception

The series has been received well by critics. Paul Mavis from DVD Talk recommends Mayday as "Harrowing and surprisingly emotional" and continues with "Never exploitative, [Mayday] not only ratchets up the suspense with its well-done action scenes, it validates them by showing us the human side of these horrific air disasters." 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."

University of New South Wales's senior lecturer, 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 was nominated for nine awards. It won two, both for film editing.