''Mayday'' is a Canadian

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

television program examining air crashes, near-crashes, hijackings,

bombings A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechanic ...

, and other

disasters A disaster is an event that causes serious harm to people, buildings, economies, or the environment, and the affected community cannot handle it alone. ''Natural disasters'' like avalanches, floods, earthquakes, and wildfires are caused by natur ...

. ''Mayday'' uses re-enactments and

computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is a specific-technology or application of computer graphics for creating or improving images in Digital art, art, Publishing, printed media, Training simulation, simulators, videos and video games. These images ...

to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to each disaster. In addition, survivors, aviation experts, retired pilots, and crash investigators are interviewed, to explain how the emergencies came about, how they were investigated, and how they might have been prevented.

Cineflix Cineflix Media is a Canadian global media production and distribution company. Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, it has branches in Toronto, New York City, London, and Dublin. Subsidiaries include United Kingdom-based Cineflix Rights, ...

started production on , with a budget. In Canada itself, the program premiered on

Discovery Channel Canada Discovery Channel is a Canadian exempt discretionary service owned by Rogers Sports & Media. Based of the U.S. cable network of the same name, the channel focuses primarily on programming related to nature, science, and technology. History D ...

on 3 September 2003. Cineflix also secured deals with

France 5 France 5 () is a French free-to-air public television channel, part of the France Télévisions group. Principally featuring nonfiction and educational programming, the channel's motto is ''la chaîne de la connaissance et du savoir'' (the knowl ...

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel, known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery, is an American cable channel that is best known for its ongoing reality television shows and promotion of pseudoscience. It init ...

, Canal D,

TVNZ Television New Zealand (, "Te Reo Tātaki" meaning "The Leading Voice"), more commonly referred to as TVNZ, is a New Zealand state-owned media company and Crown entity. The company operates a television network, streaming service, and news se ...

Seven Network Seven Network (stylised 7Network, and commonly known as Channel Seven or simply Seven) is an Australian commercial free-to-air Television broadcasting in Australia, television network. It is owned by Seven West Media, Seven West Media Limited, ...

, Holland Media Group, and

National Geographic Channel National Geographic (formerly National Geographic Channel; abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo or Nat Geo TV) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by the National Geographic Global Networks unit of Disney Enter ...

to take ''Mayday'' in 144 countries and 26 languages. The series was received well by critics and nominated for a number of awards. In 2010, Sharon Zupancic won a

Gemini Award The Gemini Awards were awards given by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television between 1986–2011 to recognize the achievements of Canada's English-language television industry. The Gemini Awards are analogous to the Emmy Awards given in t ...

for her work on the season-seven episode, "Lockerbie Disaster", that depicts the bombing of

Pan Am Flight 103 Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAA103) was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, the Boeing 747 "Clipper Maid of th ...

in 1988. A

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW) is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was established in 1949. The university comprises seven faculties, through which it offers bachelor's, master's and docto ...

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" for prospective pilots.

Hallmarks

The series features re-enactments, interviews (from survivors if there are any, or from people involved in the investigation), eyewitness, CGI or computer generated imagery , and in nearly all of the episodes, voice-actor readings of

cockpit voice recorder A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to colloquially as a "black box", an outdated nam ...

(CVR) transcripts to reconstruct the sequence of events for the audience. Several passengers and crew members (whether they survived the incident or not) are picked and actors/actresses play the roles of those passengers and crew throughout the flight, usually starting from boarding of the flight. The flight routines in the

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled air ...

cockpit A cockpit or flight deck is the area, on the front part of an aircraft, spacecraft, or submersible, from which a pilot controls the vehicle. The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the controls th ...

, and cabin are recreated on screen starting from departure up to the moment of the emergency. At the moment of the emergency, external views 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 personnel leading up to the eventual crash or emergency landing are then recreated. Scenes in the cockpit and air traffic control centres are recreated using the transcript obtained from the CVR of the aircraft and other recordings made at the time. Throughout the episodes, the victims (or the relatives and friends of the victims) are interviewed, adding further information about a case as it relates to them personally. 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.

Production and distribution

Cineflix started production for ''Mayday'' on , with a C$2.5 million budget, after Channel Five commissioned the six-part, one-hour-each series. To keep the costs down, most of the production was kept at Cineflix's offices in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

. While in production, the series was sold to

, and Canal D. On , Cineflix announced that it had sold the series to

, and Holland Media Group. Later that year on 22 October, a month before the airing of the first season, Cineflix announced that it had secured a major international deal with

to air ''Mayday'' in 144 countries and 26 languages. In 2011, Smithsonian Networks aired season five, renamed ''Air Disasters'', making it the first time in the United States that ''Mayday'' had aired on a channel other than National Geographic. On 25 January 2012, Cineflix Rights announced that it would be selling seasons 8, 9, and 11 (23 episodes) to Smithsonian Networks. On 28 March 2014, Cineflix Rights announced a deal with Smithsonian Networks to air seasons three, four, and 13 (34 episodes). ''Air Disasters'' is also available on

Paramount+ Paramount+ (formerly known as CBS All Access in the United States and 10 All Access in Australia) is an American Video on demand#Subscription models, subscription video on-demand Over-the-top media service, over-the-top Streaming media, stream ...

, which also carries some Smithsonian Networks programming. In 2020,

The Weather Channel The Weather Channel (TWC) is an American pay television television channel, channel owned by Weather Group, LLC, a subsidiary of Allen Media Group. The channel's headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia. Launched on May 2, 1982, the channel ...

in the United States began airing several episodes of the series under the title ''Mayday: Air Disaster''. Starting in 2021 and continuing to this day, the Wonder and On the Move YouTube channels (owned by Little Dot Studios, a subsidiary of

All3Media All3Media Limited is a British worldwide independent television, film, and digital production and distribution company based in London. The All3Media group consists of more than 50 production and distribution companies and labels from the Uni ...

) uploaded the first nine seasons of ''Mayday'' and the ''Crash of the Century'' special with the episodes in their full uncut versions and are available in all countries, with the exception of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, where they are geoblocked. In the United States, the show's tenth and twelfth seasons are available for streaming online on free, advertiser-supported streaming services

Tubi Tubi (stylized as tubi) is an American over-the-top ad-supported streaming television service owned by Fox Corporation since 2020. The service was launched on April 1, 2014, and is based in Los Angeles, California. In 2023, Tubi, Credible L ...

and

Freevee Amazon Freevee (stylized as freevee and fv, also shortened as Freevee, formerly known as IMDb Freedive and IMDb TV, and sometimes spelled FV) is an American ad-supported video-on-demand (VOD) streaming service owned by Amazon, with original an ...

under the title ''Mayday: Air Disasters'', while the show's first season is also made available for streaming online on

Amazon Prime Video Amazon Prime Video, known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming television service owned by Amazon. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced or co-produced by ...

, provided by MagellanTV, under the title ''MayDay: Air Disaster Investigations''.

Episodes

As of 12 January 2025, 276 episodes of ''Mayday'' have aired, not including Season 25, including five ''Science of Disaster'' specials, three ''Crash Scene Investigation'' spin-offs, which do not examine aircraft crashes, and a sub-series labelled ''The Accident Files'' that aired six seasons.

Reception

The series has been well received by critics. Franck Tabouring from

DVD Verdict DVD Verdict was a judicial-themed website for DVD reviews. The site was founded in 1999. The editor-in-chief was Michael Stailey, who owned the website between 2004 and 2016, and the site employed a large editorial staff of critics, whose revie ...

said, "It's a well-produced show with plenty of compelling information about tragic accidents, telling how some people survived and others didn't." The senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Raymond Lewis, conducted a study on teaching strategy loosely based on the series. The study was done with prospective pilots studying the "Aircraft Systems for Aviators" undergraduate course by including "study of air accidents and incidents associated with aircraft systems." The results of the study showed "the use of air accidents and incident scenarios had a positive effect on learning outcomes."

Awards and nominations

Overall, the series has been nominated for nine awards, winning two, both for

film editing Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film stock, film which increasingly involves the use Digital cinema, of digital ...

Home media

In 2009,

Entertainment One Lionsgate Canada is a Canadian entertainment company and a subsidiary of Lionsgate Studios. Based in Toronto, the company is primarily involved in the acquisition and production of films and television series. The company began on June 1, 1973 ...

released the complete first season of the show on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

in Region 1 in Canada.

Shock Records Shock Records was an Australian independent record label, branded with the logo Shock or Shock Australia. Founded in 1988, it traded as Shock Records Pty. Ltd, and its publishing arm as Shock Music Publishing Pty. Ltd. Its most prominent sublab ...

has released Seasons 1–18 in Australia as a 48-disc set, coded NTSC, Region 4.

References

Informational notes Citations

External links

Cineflix: ''Mayday''

Cineflix: ''Mayday – Science of Disaster''
(Archive)
Cineflix: ''Crash of the Century''
*
Mayday
' on

(Archive)
''Air Crash Investigation''
on National Geographic Channel UK
''Air Crash Investigation''
National Geographic Channel Australia
''Air Disasters''
on

Smithsonian Channel The Smithsonian Channel is an American pay television channel owned by Paramount Global through its media networks division under MTV Entertainment Group. It offers video content inspired by the Smithsonian Institution's museums, research facil ...

(Archive) * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mayday (Tv Series) 2000s Canadian documentary television series 2010s Canadian documentary television series 2003 Canadian television series debuts Canadian television docudramas Television series by Cineflix Discovery Channel (Canadian TV channel) original programming Documentary television series about aviation Canadian English-language television shows National Geographic (American TV channel) original programming Television series by Bell Media Television shows about aviation accidents or incidents Television series featuring reenactments