A cockpit voice recorder documented the horrifying moment when an aircraft spiraled out of control and crashed after the pilot let his children into the cockpit. In March 1994, relief pilot Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky was one of three pilots on a flight from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, China. Alongside the three pilots, Yaroslav’s two children were also present in the cockpit.
Aeroflot Flight 593, with 63 passengers, nine flight attendants, and three pilots on board, also included Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky’s two teenage children, 12-year-old Yana and 16-year-old Eldar. The siblings were allowed into the cockpit to visit their father and experiment with the controls while the plane was on autopilot.
The aircraft’s black box recorded Yana expressing frustration to her father and his caution about their actions. Although the autopilot was activated, Eldar inadvertently deactivated it for about 30 seconds by applying too much force on the controls.
During this short interval, Eldar gained control of the plane’s movements, triggering a sequence of events that would ultimately lead to a catastrophic outcome.
As the aircraft veered right and deviated from its planned path, Eldar noticed something was wrong. The three pilots on board quickly realized the deviation, but by then, the Airbus A310 had already banked sharply beyond its safe limits.
The plane descended rapidly, then stalled, prompting an automatic dive to regain altitude. Although the pilots managed to stabilize the aircraft and pull it out of the dive, their correction was too abrupt, leading to another stall.
Amidst the chaos, Yaroslav can be heard urgently instructing his children to move to the rear of the plane. “Do you understand the danger?” he asks as they frantically try to correct their mistake and get the plane back on course. Despite his reassurances to his children that everything is fine, the situation remains dire.
The audio recording ends abruptly at this point. Although the pilots managed to regain control of the spinning aircraft, it had descended too low and crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range, resulting in the deaths of everyone on board.
Subsequent investigations found no mechanical faults, indicating that the crash was likely caused by the children’s unauthorized handling of the controls. A significant finding was that if the pilots had allowed the autopilot to correct the issue instead of intervening manually, the situation would have resolved itself, and all passengers would have survived.
In response to the tragedy, an Aeroflot representative announced that stricter cockpit security measures had been implemented.