Having worked overseas for a number of years and seen these procedures in action on several occasions, they worked well. ATC instantly got the message, the aircraft concerned (not mine) were vectored out of the hold, given priority for landing, and nobody batted an eyelid. It seems to me that some people here like to make mountains out of molehills. Perhaps they need to broaden their horizons and see how the real world operates outside the sheltered workshop that is Australian aviation.
You make my point for me, albeit inadvertently, Buzzbox.
The “procedure” could work just the same if the mandated phrase were “Fluffy Puppy” or “Ford Prefect” or “Ethel The Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying”.
In the “real world”, the word “Mayday” is usually used to describe a ‘mountain’, not a ‘molehill’. That’s why it’s hardly surprising when the media and punters get really animated when they hear that an airliner’s crew has declared a “Mayday”. And the media and punters get really sceptical when the airline says ‘move on, nothing to see here, there was never a risk to safety’.
The terminology makes a mountain out of a molehill.
I get it: There’s a power stoush going on between ATC and airlines. ATC don’t want airlines to be ‘encouraged’ to use fuel management practises which assume they’ll be able to ‘cut the queue’ by simply declaring a ‘Fluffy Puppy’. So the bright idea: Let’s make sure it can only be done by declaration of a ‘Mayday’, thus turning the circumstances into a ‘mountain’. But the same outcome could be achieved without the ‘collateral damage’ of declaring a ‘Mayday’ when there’s no objective emergency.
And I also get it that the aim of the declaration is to precipitate priority changes
now on the basis of calculations and predictions as to what could happen if nothing changes. But I note that the
prediction of what
could happen, which results in the requirement to declare a ‘Mayday’, includes landing with
1 minute of final reserve having been consumed. (And please: Let’s not rehash all the arguments about instrument accuracy and potential further random delays, which arguments lead inexorably to requirements for declarations of ‘Mayday’ earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier…)
Finally, this all points up why this has
nothing to do with a C152 doing circuits out the back of Bourke and why this special ‘Mayday’ declaration rule should not apply to them at all.