"Mayday" is the internationally agreed code, so that's one reason to use that - but US accident investigators also noticed a pattern that American pilots are often too reluctant to declare emergency status when it's appropriate as it is here, because they feel it's "not that bad" yet. Having them say it's an emergency without saying "Mayday" is good enough and might mean a few more cases that should have been emergencies are declared as such.
I might look for the link later, but there's an incident with a Youtube reconstruction where a private pilot is nearly out of fuel, the weather is poor, and he's approaching a USAF base en route to his last hope landing site. Airbases are military facilities, closed to civilian traffic. He asks the controller if he can land there. She says he can't... unless it's an emergency.
He should say "Yes, this is an emergency, I'm on fumes here and the weather is much worse than I expected". She'd turn on the airfield's powerful landing lights, and maybe he'd spend the evening explaining his screw up and apologising to a base commander or at worst spend the night in a cell. Nobody dies. Instead he pressed on, and his dire situation only became clear to her when it was too late and he was already doomed.
Listening to the audio, the pilot first says, "We've experienced an engine failure, need a turn." ATC does not respond, so he calls again and says "Mayday" in order to unequivocally get their attention.
There are actually two different emergency calls. There is "mayday", and there is "pan-pan", which is a less urgent version of "mayday", but that is hardly ever used.
I landed on a private runway due to bad weather. I saw it was private on the chart but seriously did not care.
It was over a mile long and had landing lights. It was owned by some Texas billionaire brothers who kept their jet there. The people there were actually super nice and loaned us a car to get lunch.
Experienced pilots don't mind calling mayday, but:
1) Often ATC will ask you a lot of distracting questions. It starts with what the problem is and how many souls are on board, but can be lengthy and doesn't solve your problem.
If you listen to the Sully Hudson flight, you can hear how terse Sully is to avoid a conversation with ATC while he's busy flying.
2) You may be asked for a written letter afterwards, or an investigation may start. Your airline would be interested.
3) ATC is not responsible for your plane, and cannot fly it for you. Most ATC don't even have an airplane rating.
Pilots have a "get out of jail free card" by filing a NASA report for non-intentional violations. You can search that database.
I filed one once when I was flying an old rental with sketchy navigation equipment into Class B just in case the gauges were out of tolerance.
You can hear the fire alert going off before the mayday.
The fact that they requested a left turn at first it meant the controller knew the right engine was out and they'd need left turns to come in. Always find the level of training impressive and I'm glad they made it back safely.
I don't follow how the right engine being out means left turns. Seems like you'd have extra thrust on the left side and you'd want to make right turns. They wanted to keep the right engine high? I'm not sure what I missed.
That's exactly the problem, turning too heavily into the side of the dead engine can introduce a situation where it's impossible to pull out of that turn.
Turning into the live engine is more controllable. When you turn toward the dead engine, the tendency is to turn more. You can do it, but it’s not as stable.
“Declaring an emergency” is US specific. The rest of the world doesn’t recognise this phrase you have to use either “Mayday” for immediate danger to life or “Pan Pan” for less severe problems. As I understand it, “Declaring an emergency” is the equivalent of a Mayday and the US is very slowly switching away from this non standard phraseology.
"Declaring an emergency" isn't even correct in the US. The FAR/AIM only lists "mayday" and "pan pan". (Yes, it's oddly common here in the US for some reason. I think some pilots are afraid to say the "m" word.)
That said, controllers are human. As long as you get the message across somehow they'll do everything they can to help, even with non-standard phraseology.
Of course, the risk of non-standard phraseology is that you might be misunderstood - especially in countries where English isn't the primary language. It's still good to stick to standard ICAO phraseology whenever possible.
For sure, I think in an English speaking country you would probably get your point across. They would most likely come back with asking for confirmation that you are declaring 'mayday', but you would probably cause varying degrees of confusion in many other countries.
I suppose the aim is to make it absolutely clear as quickly as possible that you want ATC to press the big red button labeled 'crash' which sets off the alarms in the airport fire station and causes other controllers to start diverting flights away and telling planes on approach to go around.
If anyone is curious about what the books say, US Air Traffic Controllers use phraseology prescribed by FAA General Order 7110.65.
Also known as the 7110 or the point sixty-five, it includes rules that Air Traffic Controllers must follow to ensure safe and effective operations. So if you're a pilot and are wondering why you have a Hold For Release or are told "unable", you might find the reason in this document.
The Wikipedia article [0] links the PDF version as well as the online version.
"Based on the investigation conducted by the Committees, four key legislative reforms proposed by Democrats would help prevent future cyberattacks:
[A] hold federal financial regulatory agencies accountable for their consumer protection oversight responsibilities;
[B] require federal contractors to comply with established cybersecurity standards and guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST);
[C] establish high standards for how data breach victims should be notified;
[D] and strengthen the ability of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to levy civil penalties for private sector violations of consumer data security requirements."
On [B], they note that "Equifax was a federal contractor at the time of its data breach".
On [D], they note that "In the three years before the Equifax data breach, the company spent only about 3% of its operating revenue on cybersecurity—less than the company spent on stock dividends...Civil penalties would incentivize private sector companies to prioritize and invest in continually upgrading and deploying modernized IT solutions and applying cybersecurity best
practices."
