30 years since the plane crash caused by a visit from a pilot’s children

30 years ago, on March 23, 1994, there was a tragic accident involving an Aeroflot Airbus A310 with 75 people on board (Aeroflot 593). The main reason was that the pilot let his children play in the cabin during the flight.

Remember the case

The traditional Russian airline, Aeroflot, operated weekly flights between Moscow and Hong Kong. Flight 593 was originating from Sheremetyevo International Airport to Kai Tak International Airport.

Being a novelty from the 90s, the Airbus A310 was being introduced into the company’s fleet from mid-1992. With capacity for 185 passengers, the new European plane was Aeroflot’s bet for international flights. The configuration was divided into three classes: 12 passengers in First Class, 35 in Business and 138 in Economy.

On March 23, 1994, the flight was operated by the Airbus A310-300 registration F-OGQS, an aircraft that the company had received less than two years ago.

On board were around 63 passengers, including 40 Russian nationals, 23 passengers of other nationalities and a crew of 12 people, three pilots and nine flight attendants.

That day, pilot Yaroslav Kudrinsky was called in to replace one of the starting pilots. So, on the flight from Moscow to Hong Kong were Yaroslav’s two children, 15-year-old Eldar and 12-year-old Yana.

Thus, the Airbus A310 continued towards Hong Kong.

Fateful visit

Already flying over Siberia, pilot Yaroslav’s children went to visit the Airbus cockpit. Both Eldar and Yana sat in their father’s chair, in command of the aircraft that was at a cruising altitude of 40 thousand feet.

The father activated the plane’s autopilot and then asked his youngest daughter to sit in the Captain’s position. Yana even made movements with the controls of the Airbus A310, but nothing that could cause any problems. However, when it was Eldar’s turn, the eldest son, the 15-year-old performed the same movements as his sister, but with more force.

By applying more force to the aircraft’s controls, the autopilot was deactivated and control was partially passed to the Commander’s son. As a result, Eldar ended up tilting the Aeroflot plane to the right and this caused some alarms to be triggered in the cabin.

The two pilots did not know what was happening at that time, and the aircraft continued to tilt to the right. After a few seconds the inclination was already at 45º and soon after 90º. At that moment, the Airbus A310 was already uncontrollable, since, with this angle of inclination, there are no conditions for the plane to deal with this situation.

Already in a steep descent and at high speed, the aircraft lost support and entered a stall with a very sudden descent, causing a G force that made the pilots’ work difficult.

In this sense, the pilots fought and managed to regain control of the aircraft even with several objects flying towards them. First officer Piskaryov gave more power to the engines and pulled the controls to try to level the aircraft, but the Airbus A310’s upward movement was so strong that the Aeroflot aircraft lost lift again.

The Commander again acted and tried to compensate by controlling the plane’s rudder and pulling hard so that the Airbus returned to level. However, in his haste to recover from the dive, Piskaryov overcorrected with the controls sending the plane into a near-vertical climb that did no good. Thus, Aeroflot’s Airbus A310 crashed over the Kuznetsk Alatau forest in Siberia, killing all 75 occupants of the aircraft.

Investigations

With the recovery of the black boxes from the Aeroflot plane, the facts were clarified. For some time the company remained silent trying to ‘hush up’ the fact that the Commander’s children were in the cabin.

In the end, investigations concluded that the fact that Commander Yaroslav’s children entered the cockpit was one of the contributing factors to the tragic accident. Furthermore, there was a lack of specific and intensified training for the two pilots, given their failure to detect that the maneuver was being carried out at a greater angle than the plane was capable of performing.

Thus, there was no singular cause that led to the loss of Aeroflot 593. The accident was the tragic result of a combination of factors that led to the tragedy, the starting point being the visit of the children in the flight deck.