A chilling black box recording revealed the final moments before a Russian passenger jet plunged into the mountains, all because a pilot let his children handle the controls mid-flight.
On March 23, 1994, Aeroflot Flight 593, an Airbus A310, was en route from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong when disaster struck. The aircraft carried 63 passengers and 12 crew members, including three pilots.
Among them was Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky, a relief pilot who made a fatal decision when he allowed his two teenage children, 12-year-old Yana and 16-year-old Eldar, into the cockpit to experience the thrill of flying.
While the aircraft was on autopilot, Kudrinsky let his children sit in the captain’s seat and interact with the flight controls. At first, this seemed harmless since autopilot was engaged, meaning the plane should have remained stable regardless of minor control movements.
However, when Eldar took the controls, he unknowingly applied too much force, disengaging autopilot for approximately 30 seconds. He temporarily gained full manual control over the plane’s movements without realising it.
The aircraft began banking sharply to the right, veering off course. By the time the pilots recognised the problem, the plane had already tilted nearly 90 degrees, far beyond what the Airbus A310 was designed to handle.
The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captured the moment of realisation. As the aircraft began to roll dangerously, Yana, who had initially complained about not getting a longer turn, was overheard, followed by her father warning: « Don’t run there, or they’ll fire us. »
Then, as Eldar noticed the aircraft behaving abnormally, panic set in. The pilots scrambled to regain control, but the extreme tilt had already caused an aerodynamic stall, where the wings lost their lift, and the aircraft began a steep descent.
In a desperate attempt to recover, the pilots managed to pull the plane out of the dive. However, in doing so, they overcorrected, causing the aircraft to stall a second time, sealing its fate.
« Go to the back! Go to the back, Eldar! » Kudrinsky can be heard shouting. « You see the danger, don’t you? » As the situation spiralled out of control, he ordered his children to leave the cockpit: « Get out now! All is normal. »
Those would be his last recorded words before the transmission abruptly cut off.
Despite the crew’s frantic efforts, the aircraft had lost too much altitude. Just minutes after the autopilot was disengaged, Flight 593 crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range in southern Siberia, killing everyone on board instantly.
A detailed investigation revealed no mechanical or technical failures—the aircraft was in perfect working order. Instead, the crash was attributed entirely to human error: the unauthorised cockpit visit and the accidental disengagement of autopilot.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking discovery was that if the pilots had let autopilot correct the problem rather than attempting to fix it manually, the system would have stabilised the aircraft on its own, and the crash would never have happened.
Following the tragedy, Aeroflot revised its cockpit regulations, implementing stricter security measures to prevent unauthorised individuals—even family members—from entering the cockpit during flights.
This disaster remains one of the most tragic examples of how even a momentary lapse in cockpit discipline can lead to catastrophic consequences.
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