This morning, whilst flying up to Scotland from LHR, an interesting development occurred on 121.5 in the East Anglian region. An aircraft was lost in IMC, with the pilot quite clearly distressed talking to London Centre D&D. The crux of it was that he had taken off and found himself unable to land anywhere due to the fog and low cloud. I think he may have been a PPL, and we all know that these moments can be frightening. Throughout this incident, 5 separate calls were made from other aircraft, with the obligatory "you're on Guard!!". Twice the military controller at London Centre had to tell these idiots to be quiet and that there was an aircraft in distress!
It is quite unbelievable that people really have no idea of what the distress frequency is used for!!
