How Canadian TV show Mayday helped avert FlyDubai hijacking horror

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A long-running Canadian documentary series that dramatizes real-life air disasters played a supporting role in averting one during last month’s attempted hijacking of a FlyDubai flight to Tel Aviv.

Passenger Yaniv Hayun told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he knew to pull back on the steering controls of the nosediving Boeing 737 MAX 8 from watching Air Crash Investigation – known as Mayday in Canada and soon to start its 27th season.

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Hayun was briefly in charge of the plane’s yoke before two off-duty pilots took over and made a safe landing in Saudi Arabia.

Mayday executive producer Alex Bystram spoke to The Globe and Mail about the Cineflix re-enactment show, which airs in more than 150 countries and 45 languages, and its recent brushes with reality.

What was your reaction when you heard about Hayun talking about your show?

I’ve heard of pilots using our show a training tool, mostly on what not to do in these events, but I’ve never really heard of a passenger using what they’ve learned to save an airplane. Actually, I’ve never heard of a passenger trying to save an airplane, period. So it was surprising, but a nice surprise, to be involved in a positive outcome. If he gave the pilots behind him a few extra seconds to recover the plane, that’s great.

You’re obviously not in the business of making instructional videos for passengers, but if a plane is in a dive, is that what you should do? Pull back on – it’s called the yoke?

I suppose so. I’ve also read that if you do it wrong, or if you pull back too forcefully, you could cause structural damage to the airplane. Luckily, he didn’t do that.

Is the show reaching out to Hayun?

We have tried to connect with him and haven’t heard back. He gave one interview at the airport and hasn’t said much else since. We’d love to get him to Toronto. I extended an invitation to come to a taping.

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You’re working on the 27th season right now?

We just wrapped up shooting the 27th season, so that’s still in post production and starts airing in the new year. But we’re already looking ahead to the season after that.

And Mayday shoots in Toronto?

We’ve got a studio out in Etobicoke and we’ve got a cockpit set that can become a Airbus A321 one week, and then three weeks later it’ll be a Boeing 737. We’ve got an air traffic control set. We’ve got various investigative offices and we’ve got a half-length passenger cabin that also gets modified depending on the type of airplane we’re portraying.

How the FlyDubai jet bound for Israel managed to pull out of its sudden plunge

Mayday has been on since 2003. Was Sept. 11 part of its inspiration?

The genesis of the show was: Let’s dramatize these significant aviation disasters using the cockpit voice recordings and the official reports. For most of these accidents, there’s a cockpit voice recording that tells you everything that the captain said and did, either in the moments leading up to disaster or in the moments leading up to saving the airplane.

Since then the show has evolved more into a show about the investigators and how they show up at the scene and try to piece together the events based on sometimes really limited clues.

Now you supplement documentation with interviews with investigators?

We’re very close with the National Transportation Safety Board in the U.S. We work with the Air Accidents Investigation Branch in the U.K. Most investigative agencies are happy to deal with us because they know that we understand the material, they know that we’re not going to sensationalize these accidents and that we’re going to discuss the lessons that were learned as a result. That’s at the heart of all the shows.

There’s a study in Australia about using your show as a teaching strategy for pilots that showed a positive effect on learning outcomes. Are you aware of its integration into other educational environments?

Just anecdotally. Embry–Riddle [Aeronautical University], for instance, I’ve heard that they use our show in classrooms to show how pilots reacted in certain situations and what the outcomes of those actions were. I’ve heard also, anecdotally, that pilot lounges around the world have copies of our show available.

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That’s a surprise that pilots will watch Mayday while relaxing between flights! Mayday doesn’t ever get bought as inflight entertainment, though, right?

A while ago, I think it was airing on WestJet. But yeah, I don’t think it’s a type of show that people want to watch on a plane.

Though now we know it may have this educational value. It could be shown right after the seatbelt video.

What I’ve heard from people who watch the show is that they find it comforting to know just how unlikely it is that a plane is going to crash. What our show illustrates is that it takes a really unlikely series of events to bring down an airplane.

Your show also intersected with Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal recently. The second season was inspired by his obsession with Mayday and noticing a recurring pattern in black box transcripts about first officers or co-pilots having trouble challenging captains in difficult situations. Did you know that was in the works?

Even before he said that he was inspired by our show, we felt like he must be watching our show because he’s referencing accidents that we’ve covered. It was nice when he came out and said he was a fan. We are glad he found some inspiration and managed to shine a light on what is a very important issue in aviation – the hierarchy in the cockpit.

So he’s highlighted something valid?

Absolutely. I can’t count the number of accidents that we have done that resulted from a first officer or a flight engineer hesitant to point something out to a domineering or dominant captain.

We just finished an episode recently about a flight in Pakistan that crashed because the captain had been berating his first officer for almost an hour before landing. The first officer became so afraid to speak up, they ended up slamming into a mountainside outside of Islamabad.

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Nathan has this idea of having captain and co-pilot perform improv exercises together before flying. Have you ever had pilots perform on your show?

Pilots are good at flying planes, but not that great at acting. Similarly, actors are really good at acting and not so good at flying planes. Our actors work closely with, usually, Air Canada pilots on set, introducing them to the various controls and how they’re used, and how they should handle them, and how much force they should use when they’re pulling or pushing certain things.

That’s interesting. I’ve seen a lot of movies where a plane’s going down, and someone’s pulling back on the steering. Maybe this FlyDubai passenger knew the force with which to grab it properly because he watches your show and your actors are trained in that matter.

Maybe. What I wonder is if he has seen it a number of times on our show that he’s confident enough to know that it is the right thing to do, that it caused him not to hesitate.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Mayday airs on USA Network Canada and streams on Crave.