Mayday, also known as Air Crash Investigation(s) in Australia, South Africa, Asia and some European countries, and Air Emergency and Air Disasters in the United States, is a Canadian documentary television program produced by Cineflix investigating air crashes, near-crashes, hijackings, bombings and other disasters. Mayday uses re-enactments and computer-generated imagery to reconstruct for its audiences the sequence of events leading up to each disaster. In addition, aviation experts, retired pilots and crash investigators are interviewed explaining how these emergencies came about, how they were investigated and how they could have been prevented. Cineflix started production on 13 August 2002, with a CDN$2.5 million budget. Cineflix secured deals with France 5, the Discovery Channel, Canal D, TVNZ, the Seven Network, the Holland Media Group and the National Geographic Channel, to take Mayday to 144 countries and 26 languages. The series was received well by critics and nominated for a number of awards. Sharon Zupancic won a Gemini Award for her work on the Mayday episode, "Lockerbie Disaster". A UNSW senior lecturer, Raymond Lewis, conducted a study on teaching strategy loosely based on the series. Lewis's results indicated using the strategy had "a positive effect on learning outcomes." Contents [hide] 1 Hallmarks 2 Production and distribution 3 Episodes 4 Reception 5 See also 6 References 7 External links Hallmarks[edit] The series features re-enactments, interviews, eyewitness testimony, computer-generated imagery, and in nearly all of the episodes, cockpit voice recordings to reconstruct the sequence of events to the audiences. Several passengers and crew members (whether they survived the incident or not) are picked and actors/actresses play the role of those passengers and crews throughout the flight usually starting from boarding of the flight. The flight routines in the air traffic control, cockpit and cabin are recreated on screen starting from departure up to the moment of the emergency. At the moment of the emergency, external view of the aircraft from different angles are recreated to show the effect and what had happened to the aircraft. The responses and reactions of the passengers, crews and air traffic control leading up to the eventual crash or emergency landing are then recreated. All the scenes in cockpit and air traffic control centers are recreated using the actual script obtained from the cockpit voice recorder of the aircraft and other recordings made at the time. Throughout the episodes the victims or relatives and friends of victims are interviewed.[1][2] In addition aviation experts, retired pilots and investigators are interviewed on the evidence and explain how these emergencies came about and how they could have been prevented.[2] Production and distribution[edit] Cineflix started production for Mayday on 13 August 2002, with a CDN$2.5 million budget, after Channel Five commissioned the six-part one-hour series.[3] To keep the costs down most of the production was kept at Cineflix's Toronto offices in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[4] While in production the series was sold to France 5, Discovery Channel and Canal D.[5] On 2 June 2003, Cineflix announced that they sold the series to TVNZ, the Seven Network and the Holland Media Group,[5] later on 22 October 2003, a month before the airing of the first season, Cineflix announced that they secured a major international deal with National Geographic Channel to take Mayday to 144 countries and 26 languages.[6] In 2011, Smithsonian Networks aired Season 5, making it the first time in the USA that Mayday had aired other than on National Geographic, the show was renamed to Air Disasters. On 25 January 2012, Cineflix Rights announced that they would be selling Seasons 8, 9 and 11 (23 episodes) to Smithsonian Networks.[7] On 28 March 2014, Cineflix Rights announced a deal between Smithsonian Network to air seasons 3, 4 and 13 (34 episodes).[8] Season 14 is currently airing.

• published: 17 Feb 2015
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