Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. Lauren vogelbom here. May Day is an international
Speaker 1: distress call used by airplane pilots, boat captains, and some
Speaker 1: emergency response personnel. The U S. Coast Guard deals with
Speaker 1: roughly twenty five thousand distress calls every year, some of
Speaker 1: which involved the may Day code. The signal arose just
Speaker 1: after World War One, as air traffic between Britain and
Speaker 1: mainland Europe increased dramatically. All nearby nations needed an internationally
Speaker 1: understood signal that would alert authorities to urgent aircraft problems.
Speaker 1: So why not just use the standard s OS call
Speaker 1: that navy captains used when they were in trouble. Well
Speaker 1: Ships communicated through telegraph using Morse code, and this technology
Speaker 1: made s O s of three dots, three dashes and
Speaker 1: three dots unmistakable. By contrast, aircraft pilots used radio calls,
Speaker 1: and s OS, owing to its consonants, could be misheard
Speaker 1: as other letters like F one. Frederick Stanley Mockford, a
Speaker 1: senior radio officer in London, was put in charge of
Speaker 1: finding an appropriate code word. He reasoned that because so
Speaker 1: much of the air traffic flew between Croydon, England and Paris, France,
Speaker 1: it might make sense to use a derivative of a
Speaker 1: French word. He came up with may Day, based on
Speaker 1: the French pronunciation of maydie or help me, which itself
Speaker 1: is a distilled version of la madie or come help me.
Speaker 1: The US formally adopted may day as a distress signal
Speaker 1: in due to radio interference and loud ambient noise. Pilots
Speaker 1: are told to repeat the word three times when they
Speaker 1: use the call. This repetition also serves to distinguish the
Speaker 1: transmission from others that simply refer to the Mayday call,
Speaker 1: although any situation in which it's being used is probably
Speaker 1: a little panic filled. The Federal Aviation Administration encourages pilots
Speaker 1: to offer specific information in a specific order so that
Speaker 1: emergency responds knew exactly what they're dealing with. First, they're
Speaker 1: told to repeat the word made a three times, then
Speaker 1: the stage in address, the aircraft call sign and type,
Speaker 1: the kind of emergency, the weather, the pilot's intentions, the
Speaker 1: current position and heading, the altitude, the fuel remaining in minutes,
Speaker 1: the number of people on board, and finally, any other
Speaker 1: pertinent details given its importance. Most people respect the may
Speaker 1: day's signal and use it only when absolutely necessary, but sadly,
Speaker 1: the Coast Guard occasionally deals with hoax calls, owing in
Speaker 1: large part due to the virtually untraceable VHF radio signals
Speaker 1: it uses to receive distress signals. As a result, hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars and countless man hours may be
Speaker 1: wasted trying to rescue people who were never in danger.
Speaker 1: People who have used this system can be jailed for
Speaker 1: up to ten years and find two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. But there are other distress calls that operators
Speaker 1: can use when a situation isn't life threatening. The call
Speaker 1: pan PAN means that you have an urgent situation that's
Speaker 1: not immediately putting lives at risk of For instance, if
Speaker 1: your boat ran out of fuel, then do you need assistance?
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Nathan Chandler and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. For more than this and lots of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production
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