bubbers44;
The whole point is that ATC did not catch it, so all went well, but there was a breakdown in communications!
It is impossible to know if a Mayday x 3 would have alerted ATC in a better way, from what we are lead to believe a Mayday x 3, will wake up quite a few people in the local area, not just the ones in the ATC!
This time all went well, but would it be so difficult to just say Mayday x 3, and state the emergency! Why would the pilot need to start telling ATC what they should do or prepare!
The fact that standard RT was not used, was probably also the cause that ATC thought the call was BS! As maybe that is one way of differentiating between prank calls and real RT calls!
There are so many potential variations on emergencies, imagine if everybody should have their own twist of RT calls, it would become less effective as nobody would really know what was going on!
However I rather tend to believe that some are afraid of the aftermath of a Mayday call, they imagine they will have less to explain if they use other words, that are not standard.
Imagine, "We have an emergency, a passenger is having a heart attack" or "We have an emergency, the aircraft is on fire, and we have smoke"
2 very different kinds of emergencies, which would require very different responses, however using same phraseology will maybe not catch the attention required to provide the correct response, which was proven in this incident.
This is not about anti-america/FAA, ICAO standard RT is world-wide, maybe you don't need to use it, but this does not mean it is better to use non-standard RT!
Who cares if Mayday is french, screw the french fries, and use something that will make everybody alert, instead of mumbling around about rolling trucks etc.