How A Child Crashed A Passenger Plane (A Deeper Dive into Aeroflot Flight 593) - Disaster Breakdown

In the very early hours of March 23rd, 1994, a disaster occurred in the Russian Siberian Wilderness. A passenger plane seemed to dissapeared into the night without a trace. Aeroflot flight 593 crashed on a routine flight between Moscow and Hong Kong killing 75 people. Extracted data showed the plane plunging up and down several thousands of feet before stalling into the ground. However it was what was on the Cockpit Voice Recorder which not only piqued the interest of investigators but many people across the world.
A quick search for Aeroflot flight 593 on Wikipedia leads the incident to be filed under “Untrained minor in command of controls”. A child was at the controls of a passenger plane. How? In this video we will examine and analyze the events of that night, the actions of the flight crew and the systems of the aircraft involved.

Background Music Credits
Private Eye - Jon Bjork
Aloft - LEMMiNO
Da Capo - Gavin Luke
Tracker - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
Ghosting - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
Fun While It Lasted - Emil Axelsson
I Will Remember - Gavin Luke

CHAPTERS
00:00 - Into
01:16 - Preliminary Information
5:00 - The Flight Prior to the Incident
7:46 - The Children Entered the Cockpit
11:06 - A Deeper Dive into the Behavior of the Autopilot
14:34 - The Final Moments
22:12 - Aftermath

Sources:
iniSimulations - individual's names withheld

[DisasterBreakdown]

CORRECTION NOTICES
1. When breaking down the names of the flight crew I seemed to have missed that the Flight Commander's full name was Andrey Viktorovich Danilov. I missed out on the first name. "Viktorovich" being a patronymic. Apologies for that.
2. its been brought to my attention that the sound heard at 17:33 in this video is actually the stall alarm, not the autopilot disconnect. The sounds heard at 20:09 was the Autopilot disconnect which sounded not long after. (Around 10 seconds later). My apologies for this mistake.

[JK-xtro]

Imagine sitting in your seat and watching two kids go into the cockpit, and a while later the plane starts diving..

[drosera]

"You'll only go to sleep in first class, don't run there or they'll fire us."
Oh yeah, we'll let you fly the plane. But don't run in first class. Running in first class is inexcusable.

[greymark]

Very familiar with this accident. Not only were the crew not totally familiar with the A310, but to allow both children to control the plane and at one point full manual control by a child, is beyond negligence.

[HeleneLouise]

My brother was the company pilot of a small plane and allowed my nephew to sit on his lap and hold the controls. He was around 6 at the time. My nephew yanked back hard on the controls and stressed the entire plane. My brother said he was afraid for a moment that the wings would tear off. I hope everyone has gotten the memo by now. Don't let children in the pilot's seat. This video makes my blood run cold.

[mf-ilpo]

probably the dumbest "bring your kid to work day" participation activity ever

[timmy]

Bringing teenage children to “test” out flying on a plane filled with passengers was a recipe for disaster.

[rakeemGTR]

Till this day I still think it's the silliest, dumbest, most avoidable accident I've ever seen...

[mhzprayer]

Wow feel bad for so many families and especially Mrs.Kudrinski. The embarrassment and outrage combined with losing her family due to husband's actions.

[АлександрРумянцев-щд]

My mum spent 17 years working as an air hostess, firstly in Aeroflot, and then, when the USSR collapsed, in Urkrainian Airlines. In the 1990s, the violations of safety protocols, commited by pilots, were quite frequent. And some pilots had this idiotic "custom" of letting their sons operate an airplane for a brief moment of time.

[kyleolson]

"I am still not 100% sure that is correct"
I respect the level of research and honesty involved in this video.

So many creators are satisfied with repeating what they find on Wikipedia as gospel. You went out of your way to understand the truth, and yet were still clear to the viewer about what you could not be sure of so that you would not become a false source yourself if you were wrong.

[sammyi]

Man, I feel so bad for Eldar... His final moments had to have been just awful, feeling like HE caused the plane to go crazy and having to listen to his father shout at him to "Get out" over and over again. He probably had no idea that none of it was truly his fault and that his father should have never let him "fly" the plane to start with! It's not like he knew what he was doing. That poor kid...

[EngrPalits]

Imagine your schedule on your heart surgery is ongoing then someone's head surgeons daughter comes in during operation hahahaha

[oliverrugg]

Honestly, what angers me most about the crash isn't the fact that the guy let his kid pilot the aerocraft, it's the fact that they could have so easily saved it after the initial dive, but were simply too incompetent to do so.

[lennygracelove]

I feel so bad for everyone that died. Especially those kids. That boy wouldn't leave the cockpit, and probably died believing he's at fault, when really it was the adults.

[eltonalonsopompeu]

And Eldar, of all people, was the one who noticed first that the plane was rolling onto a steep bank…

[JoseJimenez-shyi]

One the stupidest accident in history.

[declannewton]

While Captain Kudrinsky's actions set in place the series of events that brought down Aeroflot flight 593, I feel like First Officer Piskaryov doesn't get much blame in discussions about this accident.
He had two opportunities in which, if he acted appropriately, the plane would not have crashed.

The first instance is when the plane started banking to the right. Piskaryov had enough time to: see that the seemingly uncommanded roll was getting too steep, declare he has control and take the control column, tell Eldar to remove his hands, and fully disconnect the autopilot so he could manually level the plane. If he had done this, nobody but those in the cockpit would have known the reason for that roll.

The second instance was when the plane was diving. Somehow Piskaryov managed to put the plane in a new vertical ascent and stalled it. They could have recovered the plane then, but he blew it. For perspective, the crew of Fedex Express flight 705 came under attack by an offduty crew member deadheading who was hellbent on crashing the plane. After attacking the three crew members, the flight engineer, and captain along the hijacker stumbled out of the cockpit in the area behind to fight for control of the plane. The pilot flying, the first officer had received a direct blow from a hammer to the side of his head; literally caving in his skull and sending bone fragments into his brain. The first officer still continued to manually fly the plane. He decided the use to this advantage by performing sharp rolls and dives to aid the other flight crew fighting for control. At one point, the plane was in a near vertical dive and almost broke the sound barrier, but the first officer recovered. So to be clear, a man with literal brain damage managed to recover from a dive better than Piskayov.

[ashleys]

As a former Flight Attendant who has had to sit through countless crash scenarios and watch countless crash videos I thought I had seen them all but this, this was new. The sheer idiocy of everyone involved (minus the kids, they didn't know any better) is just mind boggling. Great job covering this story though! I was thoroughly entranced and you have earned a subscriber.

[localmenace]

The sudden “end of recording” sent chills down my spine. I can’t imagine how terrifying the moment of impact must have been.