A method (300) for requesting help by a user of a communication device (102) is disclosed. The method includes initiating (304) an emergency call by the user and successively attempting (306) to transmit a distress message to a communication system from a plurality of communication systems based on a predefined priority sequence. The predefined sequence includes a list of the communication systems (104, 106, 108, 110, and 112) arranged according to a pre-assigned priority wherein a satellite based system (112) is preferably assigned the lowest priority. Once one of the systems acknowledges the distress message, the user is notified. The method includes automatically accessing the satellite-based distress system (312), when attempts to detect the other communication systems based on the predefined sequence have failed.