Originally Posted by drive73
You guys just don't get it! The controller thought it was a fake call, most likely because the o2 masks distorted the transmission.
The only way to know for sure is to listen to the tapes, or hear what the controller actually thought.
What seems clear to me is that he thought this was a new callsign.He may have heard the first transmission and understood it. Because he could not ascertain who made it, and probably because it sounded different from the other radio calls he'd recently been hearing, he erroneously treated it as a spoof.
Possibly of more importance than the word "mayday" to have been used, was the full callsign. ExpressJet (or whatever it is) 5912, rather than just "5912". (That's not to say that I think the word "mayday" is unimportant.)
How would an American domestic pilot usually phrase those numbers?
Five-niner-one-two, or Fifty-nine-one-two, (or something different,) or is there no set format for this?
And would someone from the airline world please answer: How long does it take to change a transponder from whatever it was set to, to 7700? That action certainly would have removed any doubt in the controllers' mind.