Word: mayday
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Into the blood-stinging wind he flew. He called his "mayday!" SOS and got an instant response, first from an Air Force base at Altus, Okla., 200 miles away, then from another airborne B-47. Altus gave Obie a compass heading to come in on. His panel lights grew dimmer, his eyes burned like hot lead. He could see the compass needle but not the numbers. He turned his plane to bring the needle toward the heading he wanted: his own field, the Strategic Air Command's Dyess Air Force Base near Abilene, 150 miles away...
From above, diving at a 45° angle, the Super Sabre struck the DC-7. its right wing slashing through the right wing of the airliner. United's pilot barked: "U.A.L. 736! Mid-air collision over Las Vegas! 736!" From the jet came the cry: "Mayday!"* Then, trailing smoke and fire, the planes dropped and crashed to the desert floor of wild flowers. All 47 in the DC-7, the two officers in the F-100F were killed...
...Voice code for the standard telegraphic SOS, "Mayday" (from the French m'aidez -help me) was first approved for international use in radiotelephony at the International Radiotelegraphic Convention in Washington...
...airlines' mayday pleas for a fare boost, the Civil Aeronautics Board last August gave a majestic, bureaucratic answer. It was already conducting something called the General Passenger Fare Investigation, planned for hearings to go leisurely on until 1959. As they droned on, platoons of economists racked up 5,000 pages of testimony proving that 1) fares are now 9% lower than in 1949, while costs are astronomically higher, 2) the airlines cannot raise money to buy jet fleets. But all this failed to excite CAB. Not a single one of the five board members even bothered to show...
...Force C46 had been airborne only a few minutes when smoke began to stream from one of the engines. Fire-extinguishing procedure did no good, and Captain Thomas E. Wilson decided to abandon the plane. "MAYDAY," the distress call, went out, "MAYDAY-MAYDAY-MAYDAY...