pilotbear quote..
Regarding Mayday, if you use it and say nothing else for a few seconds ATC will be on alert immediately, the big red button will be pressed, SAR will have the Rotors running and Fire/rescue will be in the trucks ready to roll, also everyone else will or should shut up.
beardy quote.. Location: UK
The other aspect of transmitting 'mayday' is that everybody else on frequency hears it and if they have any sense will stay silent or move to another frequency; it is an excellent attention grabber.[/
Jofm5 quote.. Location: LONDON
There is alot here on this thread and not sure if I missed it being mentioned but one advantage in issuing a mayday would not only be to advise ATC of current situation but also to alert other aircraft on frequency of the requirement for the comms to be kept to a minimum so assitance can be given.[/
People, you should be maintaining the highest standards of listening watch, and keeping your long-winded, drawn-out responses to directions and non-essential requests out of the R/T picture and off the airwaves even when there's no emergency aircraft. Requests for "track miles" (can't you see where the traffic flow is being vectored on your TCAS or level-off altitudes are charted?) or reporting established on the approach
when not asked or required to do so by the pertinent country's regulations and other extraneous transmissions only bog down the system and block critical transmissions. This is especially true in the NY area where TRACON is dealing with just as many departures and arrivals out of Teterboro, White Plains etc, located in the immediate vicinity as they are out of JFK, LGA, and EWR.
In other words, hearing a "MAYDAY" call by another aircraft should by no means alter what
you should have already been doing. Nobody wants to hear you ramble on while THEY are trying to listen-up for their own call sign even in normal, busy times.
Beardy, I hope you NEVER just decide to just "move to another frequency" because you hear an emergency aircraft on freq and think its best. You may be the aircraft the controller needs to vector out of the way. And you shouldn't be yakking anyway...the next controller you suprise with your presence doesn't want to hear or listen to you explaining why you unillaterally decided to show up..if he's the next sector he may be busy on the land lines with the emergency aircraft controller. He's got his own traffic and may be having sent more his way while the other is clearing airpace. What you suggest is quite the opposite of good sense. Change freq, or standby, when you're instructed to.
pilotbea quote..That is the purpose. TO GET THE ATTENTION OF ATC. Complaining about using it is just an attempt to justify the lazy attitude people who think the rules or recommended procedures are for everyone else and not for real pilots like
Nobody's complaining about the use of "Mayday", or advocating it NOT be used. Feel free to "Mayday" until you're blue in in the face if you think it helps your situation. However, people are trying to explain to the pendants who seem to think only by using that specfic term that responses....even immediate ones...are initiated by ATC, and therefore the subsequent CFR/SAR assets. In the US, this is NOT the case. Certainly a "Mayday" call will initiate those responses, but as the TRACON tapes show, Cpt Sully's "Mayday" call was blocked but it didn't matter. And not because of luck, but because of the system. His brief description of the situation, deviation off cleared route, and his statement they were returning to the airport...
showed to the Controller that Capt Sully was exercizing his EMERGENCY Authority as oulined in the Regs, and the controller experienced no confusion about what this means or is..
it's an EMERGENCY when a PIC does so...and immediately responded by alerting LGA and began looking for other airports for the distressed aircraft.
When the Tracon controller land-lined LGA and told them to hold the T/Os because of a returning aircraft with reported loss of thrust on both engines the Local Controllers there undoubtedly sent the alert to CFR personnel on the field. So what's the problem? If anything it shows that the US system doesn't break down in this regard due to one blocked, specific term.
I do 99% of my flying overseas now and of course I'd use "Mayday" as a lead-off transmission to express an emergency situation as standard convention and common sense dictate when dealing with either pedantic or English-as-2nd-language controllers. But those like the retired BA TV Captain and some here who pontificate that it's THE (only) keystone trigger to emergency response actions by ATC and/or CFR or insinuate that not using is unprofessional are just dead wrong. In the rest of the world yes, but in US, where this event occurred, it's not the case. Controllers are allowed to think and independently act even if the aircraft doesn't have time/or is able to transmit a thing.
And to reiterate. Any pilot who needs to hear a "Mayday" on freq to realize that they "should shut up", "stay silent", or "comms to be kept to a minimum", really has no business flying in saturated airspace like the US Northeast corridor in the first place, if anywhere. There's nothing more annoying than being subjected to some R/T vainglorious tw@t who loves to hear himself on the radio.