The chilling final words of a pilot who let his children take control of the plane before it crashed, killing everyone on board, have been revealed.
A routine flight turned into a devastating disaster when a pilot allowed his children to experience flying a plane, a decision that ultimately led to tragedy.
On March 23, 1994, Aeroflot Flight 593, an Airbus A310, was en route from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong.
The flight carried 63 passengers and 12 crew members, including three pilots. Among them was Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky, a relief pilot who made a fatal mistake by inviting his two children – 12-year-old Yana and 16-year-old Eldar – into the cockpit.
While the aircraft was flying on autopilot, Kudrinsky allowed his children to sit in the captain’s seat and interact with the controls.
Initially, this seemed harmless, as autopilot was engaged, which should have maintained stability despite minor control inputs.
However, things took a dangerous turn when Eldar, unaware of the consequences, applied excessive force to the controls, inadvertently disconnecting the autopilot for around 30 seconds.
Unknowingly, Eldar had taken full manual control of the aircraft, causing it to bank sharply to the right, The Seattle Times reports.
By the time the pilots realized what was happening, the plane had already reached a dangerously steep angle—nearly 90 degrees—far beyond what the Airbus A310 was designed to withstand.
The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captured the tense moments as the crew grasped the severity of the situation.
Yana, disappointed that her turn at the controls had been cut short, was heard speaking just before Kudrinsky warned, “Don’t run there, or they’ll fire us.”
As Eldar sensed something was wrong, panic set in.
The pilots scrambled to regain control, but the extreme tilt had already caused an aerodynamic stall, sending the aircraft into a rapid descent.
In a desperate attempt to recover, the crew managed to pull the plane out of the dive—only to overcorrect, triggering a second stall that ultimately sealed the aircraft’s fate.
“Go to the back! Go to the back, Eldar!” Kudrinsky shouted in a last-ditch effort to regain control, according to The Express. “You see the danger, don’t you?”
Realizing the gravity of the situation, he ordered his children out of the cockpit: “Get out now! All is normal.”
These would be his final recorded words before the transmission abruptly cut off.
Despite the crew’s desperate efforts, the aircraft had already lost too much altitude. Minutes after the autopilot disengaged, Flight 593 crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range in Siberia, killing all on board instantly.
Investigators later determined that there were no mechanical failures – the plane was in perfect working condition.
The crash was solely the result of human error: the unauthorized cockpit visit and the unintended disengagement of autopilot.
One of the most tragic revelations was that if the pilots had allowed the autopilot to correct the problem instead of intervening manually, the system could have stabilized the aircraft, and the disaster could have been averted.
Following this incident, Aeroflot implemented stricter regulations, ensuring that only authorized personnel were allowed in the cockpit.
