Not so long ago, one of our crews, flying northbound from Casablanca to Seville airspace, experienced a pressurisation failure just after reaching cruise level and declared mayday with a diversion into Malaga. They were cleared to land immediately upon calling Malaga approach after hand-over from Seville.
In a mayday situation, is this likely to happen in UK airspace? Considering the workload the crew may be having to deal with, and the fact they will have priority, would procedures allow a UK approach controller to do the same, or would it still be necessary to hand over to the tower? Or would it vary from place to place, for example depending on how busy the airspace/airfield is?
Fortunately never had a mayday so not quite sure how the fine details such as this would work - obviously when we train emergencies in the simulator the TRE does not have exact replication of each airfield's approach/tower procedures as his main priority!