Drinking Game / Mayday

• Take a chug if the incident being covered happened less than five years before the episode was first released.
• Take a sip for every 1,000 hours of combined flying time bestowed upon the pilots involved in the episode's incident. Another sip for every 500 hours in the type of aircraft in use.
  • Please note, that attempting to do this on the Japan Airlines Flight 123 episode (Season 3, Episode 3) appears to be hazardous to one's health using these previously mentioned rules, and probably fatal, Yes, Really. ^{The reason?} The total number of sips comes out to 48.
• Take a shot for each pilot who is mentioned to have had some experience in the military. Another shot if they're on active military duty. (e.g. a military transport aircraft or a fighter jet.)
• Take a shot if one of the pilots is a flight instructor; two if said pilot is actively involved in a flight lesson.
• Finish your drink if nobody on the plane survives the crash. ^note If the accident involves two planes (i.e. a runway incursion or mid-air collision), and there are survivors on one of the planes, finish half of your drink. If the second aircraft isn't mentioned until later in the episode, apply the rule to each aircraft individually.
• Finish your drink if everybody on the plane survives.
• Take a chug when someone in the re-enactment finishes a sentence with "didn't stand/have a chance".
• AVOID drinking during a Tear Jerker scene. ^note Catch up on any intake once the Tear Jerker scene ends.
• Take a swig when an episode glosses over an investigative process that other episodes would spend a healthy portion of time on. (e.g. the search of the records of TAM 402's pilots vs. those of Crossair 3597's captain.)
• Take a shot for every scenario examined by investigators that are ultimately proved to have not caused or contributed to the accident.
• Take a chug when the narrator mentions the accident involving an American-made plane, and the NTSB getting involved as a result.
• In the TAM 3054 episode, take a sip every time someone uses the word "procedure".
• In the episode on American 965, take a shot every time the captain drops an F-bomb.
• In the Turkish 1951 episode, take a sip every time the captain presses the "horn cutout" button.
• Over the course of an episode, write down a list of all the new rules you think will be introduced as a result of the investigation; take a shot for every correct guess, and two shots for every wrong guess.
• Take a sip every time the narrator says "state of the art", and two sips if someone expresses incredulity at something simply because of an aircraft being state of the art or the pilot(s) being highly experienced.
• Take a shot if a criminal act is among the first theories considered by investigators and is disproved by the end of the episode.
• Take a chug if an investigator is said to be facing one of the biggest challenges (or the biggest challenge) of their career.
• Take a shot if an interviewee speaking a foreign language says an English word or phrase which appears in the translation dub.
• Take a shot during the initial takeoff scene (if there is one) for each of the callouts made during the takeoff roll: "80 knots" "V1" "Rotate" "V2" "Positive climb" "Gear up"
• Take a shot whenever a wake vortex is considered as a possible cause of a crash at takeoff or landing. Take another shot if it's subsequently ruled out.
• Take a shot every time you hear a TAWS, TCAS, or GPWS callout alarm go off in the cockpit (such as "Pull Up", "Too Low, Terrain/Gear/Flaps", and "Bank Angle"). Do not drink for every time the alarm goes off, just drink when you hear a new one go off that you haven’t heard for that episode.
• Take a drink if investigators inspect the engine to determine whether it was running at the time of the crash.
• Take a drink if a discovery or the absence of information in an investigation is described as a 'major setback'.
• Take a drink if a lack of crew resource management is identified as a cause of an accident.
• Take a drink if money and/or schedule being prioritized over safety is identified as a factor in an accident.
• Take a drink if the investigation team is said to be under enormous pressure.
• Take a sip if the plane is described as "falling from the sky". Two sips if the plane is, in fact, gliding and at least partially controllable at this point.
• Take a shot if the Black Boxes are badly damaged and get sent to the NTSB lab in Washington.
• Finish your drink if they reconstruct the plane on a wire mesh.
• Take a shot if there is an unnamed, unspeaking female investigator in the background of the episode.
  • Take a sip every time she makes a quizzical look.
• Take a sip if the narrator calls an aviation accident "the deadliest in history" or "the deadliest in (country's) history" without specifying that he means at the time it happened and not of all time including now.
• Finish your drink if the episode ends with the head investigator typing the report alone in a dark room, illuminated only by the light of the computer screen.
• Finish your drink if the investigator speaks their final conclusions into a tape recorder.
• Take a sip if you recognise an investigator from a previous episode.
  • Take another sip if it’s Greg Feith of the NTSB.