Mayday Foundation

Stiftung Mayday was founded in 1994 to support pilots and their dependents in distress. After several families had been taken care off, we noticed, that in most of the cases strongly stressing incidents, which had not been worked up properly, led to long term damages.

While seeking for preventive measures we came across the likewise charitable foundation “International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, Inc. (ICISF), which had developed the “Critical Incident Stress Management” compiled by the psychologists Prof. Dr. Jeffrey T. Mitchell and Prof. Dr. George S. Everly, into an international standard.

As it was nearly unknown in Germany Stiftung Mayday in cooperation with the “Vereinigung Cockpit” (VC, German ALPA) introduced it to german aviation in 1998, by training pilots to become peers. These efforts were strongly supported by Deutsche Lufthansa (DLH), and with this support Stiftung Mayday was able to establish a CISM-organisation for German aviation.

Today this CISM-organisation has 250 members, organized in CISM-Teams.

The CISM-Teams are not only supporting all holders of a pilot license, but furthermore all flight-crews, as in most cases only the complete crew can help to workout the critical incidents.

To be able to react fast, the members of the CISM-Teams can be reached via an online form and an emergency hotline.

Stiftung Mayday is working independently of aviation organizations and airlines and follows the standards of ICISF. It is an official CISM-Organization (and -Hotline) of the ICISF for the aviation-community in Germany and therefore accredited by the United Nations (UNO) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It is cooperating and exchanging experiences with CISM-Organizations of foreign airlines.

Besides Stiftung Mayday other organizations in Germany are working in the field of crisis intervention as well, individually for special professional groups and sections of population. They call themselves SbE-Organizations (Stressbearbeitung nach belastenden Ereignissen – Stress Management after Critical Incidents). A list of addresses can be found under “Weblinks”.