Mayday | |
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Also known as |
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Genre | |
Created by | André Barro |
Narrated by |
Stephen Bogaert for Canada and U.S. Bill Ratner for the U.S. (Smithsonian Channel) Jonathan Aris for Australia, Asia and Europe David Bamber (Season 1 Narrator for Channel Five in UK only) |
Country of origin | Canada |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 17 |
No. of episodes | 150 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Running time | 45 minutes |
Production company(s) | Cineflix Productions |
Release | |
Original network |
Discovery Channel Canada National Geographic Channel |
Original release | 3 September 2003 | – present
External links | |
Website | |
Production website |
Mayday, also known as Air Crash Investigation in Australia, South Africa, United Kingdom, Asia and some European countries, and Air Emergency and Air Disasters in the United States, is a Canadian documentary television program 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. It premiered 3 September 2003 on Discovery Channel Canada.
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."