Airline Mayday Radio Calls Up 386% in 2023
What is causing steep rise of in-flight medical emergencies since 2021?
The following is a very spooky chart.
SQUAWK 7700 is the airline radio code that indicates a serious issue onboard the aircraft. It can be input by pilots or instructed by Air Traffic Control, and it alerts controllers and ground crew to prepare for the arrival of the aircraft.
I pulled the chart from a report detailing an inquiry conducted by veteran Virgin Australia Capt. Shane Murdock, who was fired from Virgin for refusing the COVID-19 shots. Captain Murdock who also gave a fascinating interview with reporter Charles Kovess on TNT Radio.
The dramatic increase of SQUAWK 7700 codes since 2022 was apparently compiled by a bot set up by the X account @GCFlightAlerts. It posts when a pilot squawks 7700 anywhere in the world.
Between 2018, and 2019, the mayday average was 29.1 per cent of all distress calls. During 2022, mayday calls increased by 272 per cent. In the first three months of 2023, the increase was 386 per cent. The graph shows there was an instant, steep increase when the vaccines were mandated to pilots.
Obviously Captain Murdock’s research should be the subject of a massive, international inquiry conducted by official aviation regulators.
Large commercial airliners are always flown by a Captain and First Officer. If one of them has a cardiac issue in flight, the other pilot can (in theory) fly the plane. Nevertheless, the stunning increase in mayday calls should be rigorously scrutinized.
Is this alarming trend juke a fluke or gross overstatement? How many of these Code 7700s are for medical emergencies on board, and how many are a result of mechanical issues? Was the supply chain for aircraft spare parts and electronics disrupted during the pandemic, resulting in an increase in mechanical glitches?
I strongly welcome reader feedback about this story. Is Captain Murdock the only airline industry veteran who is talking about this?
Statistically speaking, increases of that magnitude over a short time span always have an assignable cause. It can be more than one factor but is usually one major factor with potential ancillary contributing factors. The interesting thing here is that Squawk 7700s are documented incidents. The airlines and the FAA have the documented causes of all these incidents. The process is meticulous. I am a pilot and come from an airline family and worked for Boeing for 32 years. There should have been congressional hearings over this. The fact that it has been “crickets” from the industry and from media tells you that they are hiding something. To do so is breaking the law.
I saw a mention in an article about 18 months or so ago that stated wealthy people who owned their own jets universally required unvaxxed pilots. Could be related to this, you think?
Danny Huckabee