Originally Posted by
West Coast
Screaming holy **** I had a midair would also get everyone’s attention.
Feel free to dissect what many of the pedants here believe is a systemic training issue of declaring emergency vs mayday/pan, however on that day, the phraseology that was most common to both the flight crew and the controller was “declaring an emergency”
the issue comes when callsigns subsequently join the frequency and just hear a callsign being mentioned i.e. RAIDER50 vs MAYDAY RAIDER50.
It is the normal procedure for ATC and crews to append their callsign with mayday so that EVERYONE knows what is happening and can then minimise transmissions.
Either way, the crew got ATCs attention and walked away to tell the tale, that's the main point.