Name: Why Do Pilots Say "Mayday"? (It’s Not What You Think)
Uploaded: 2026-02-15T21:01:10.000Z
Duration: 5 min 54 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It is arguably the most terrifying phrase in aviation.

When a pilot says those words, it means one life is in immediate danger and they need help.

Now, we've all heard it in movies, news reports and documentaries.

It's a word that commands instant silence on the airwaves and clears the skies of traffic.

It has nothing to do with the month of May.

And curiously, it replaced the most famous distress signal in history.

Today, we're going back to 1920s London to find the surprising French origin of the word that saves lives.

Right here in Simple Things: Surprising Histories.

To understand Mayday, we first have to look at what pilots used before it.

In the early 20th century, the gold standard for distress signals was SOS.

Contrary to popular belief, SOS doesn't actually stand for Save our souls or Save our ship.

It was chosen because in Morse code, it's distinct and easy to tap out.

This worked perfectly for ships like the Titanic, which communicated using telegraphs.

But by the time World War I ended, aviation was changing.

Pilots weren't just tapping keys anymore.

If you try to say SOS over a crackly static filled radio and an open cockpit biplane, the S sound, which is a high frequency hiss, is often lost in the background noise.

SOS could easily be mistaken for other words or just completely missed by air traffic control.

As commercial air travel began to take off in the 1920s, the aviation world realized they needed a new signal.

It had to be a word that could cut through the static, a word that couldn't be mistaken for anything else in the English language.

In 1923, Mockford was a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London.

At the time, Croydon was the hub of British aviation.

He was given a specific come up with a word that pilots could shout in an emergency that would be easily understood by ground crew and other pilots.

In 1923, the vast majority of air traffic from Croydon was heading to one specific place, Le Bourget Airport in Paris, France.

Because the traffic was heavily British and French, Mockford needed a word that worked in both languages.

He thought of the French phrase for help me, which is "venez m'aider".

He focused on the second part, "m'aider."

Phonetically, it sounded exactly like the English word Mayday.

It was brilliant, it was distinct, it had a hard M and D sound that punched through radio static.

And it didn't sound like any normal conversation a pilot would be having.

In 1927, the International Radio Telegraph Convention officially adopted Mayday as the global distress call.

They also needed a protocol to make sure no one missed it.

If you listen to flight recordings, you will never hear a pilot say the word just once.

By international regulation, it must be repeated three times in a mayday.

First, to ensure that if the radio signal is cutting in and out, at least one of the words gets through to the tower.

Second, it distinguishes the distress call from a casual sentence.

If a pilot said to his co pilot, it may be a nice day, the tower might hear May Day.

By requiring the triple repetition, it triggers an immediate reflex for air traffic controllers.

When they hear the trio, they declare a situation called silence mede, imposing absolute radio silence on all other aircraft.

So the distressed plane has the frequency to itself.

But what if you have a problem that is urgent, but you aren't about to crash?

Right, this second aviation actually has a hierarchy of distress.

Mayday is for grave and imminent danger, like a fire or dual engine failure.

For urgent situations that aren't immediately life threatening, like a passenger having a heart attack or a minor navigation failure, pilots use a different pan, pan.

It comes from en panne, meaning a breakdown or mechanical failure.

And just like Mayday, it must be said three times.

So the next time you watch a movie and hear a pilot shout those famous words, remember Frederick Stanley Mockford at Croydon Airport?

He took a French cry for help, turned it into an English word and created a universal language of safety that has protected the skies for 100 years.

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