Расследования авиакатастроф: Майдей

Canadian documentary television program

Mayday—alternatively known as Air Crash Investigation(s) in Australia (Seven Network), New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom; alternatively known as Air Crash: Disaster Revealed on 5Select and some Asian and European countries; and additionally known as Air Emergency, Air Disasters, and Mayday: Air Disaster in the United States—is a Canadian documentary television program examining air crashes, near crashes, hijackings, bombings, and other disasters. Mayday uses re enactments and computer generated imagery 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 started production on , with a budget. In Canada itself, the program premiered on Discovery Channel Canada on 3 September 2003. Cineflix also secured deals with France 5, Discovery Channel, Canal D, TVNZ, Seven Network, Holland Media Group, and National Geographic Channel 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 for her work on the season seven episode, "Lockerbie Disaster", that depicts the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. A University of New South Wales 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.

The series features re enactments, interviews, eyewitness testimony, computer generated imagery, and in nearly all of the episodes, voice actor readings of cockpit voice recorder (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, cockpit, 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. To keep the costs down, most of the production was kept at Cineflix's offices in Toronto. While in production, the series was sold to France 5, Discovery Channel, and Canal D. On , Cineflix announced that it had sold the series to TVNZ, Seven Network, and Holland Media Group. 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 Plus, which also carries some Smithsonian Networks programming. In 2020, The Weather Channel in the United States began airing several episodes of the series under the title Mayday: Air Disaster.) 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, 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 and Freevee under the title Mayday: Air Disasters, while the show's first season is also made available for streaming online on Amazon Prime Video, provided by MagellanTV, under the title MayDay: Air Disaster Investigations.

As of 12 December 2023, 270 episodes of Mayday have aired, 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 four seasons.

The series has been well received by critics. Franck Tabouring from DVD Verdict said, "It's a well produced show with plenty of compelling information about tragic accidents, telling how some people survived and others didn't." Shock Records has released Seasons 1–18 in Australia as a 48 disc set, coded NTSC, Region 4.