No, it is no movie that I talking about! Today’s story is about the Aeroflot Flight 593. The Aeroflot Flight 593 was a Russian Airlines Air bus passenger airliner. What was special about this plane? Well nothing, except that the Aeroflot crashed in a hill in remote Siberia on 23 March 1994, killing all the 75 passengers and crew on board.
Illustration of A310 F-OGQS. Credits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593
What is unique about the crash of the Aeroflot 593? Well, voice and flight data recorders later revealed that the pilot’s 15-year-old son Eldar Kudrinsky was seated at the controls, not the pilot!
In 1994, the USSR had just disintegrated and a new Russia had emerged. Hence many Chinese businessmen were travelling to Russia to see the new emerging market. On this particular flight to Hong Kong, the relief pilot,Yaroslav Kudrinsky, taking advantage of the discount rates provided by the airline to him, was taking his two children for their first visit overseas. During the flight, he invited his children t0 visit him in the cockpit.
Here is what happened. [credits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incidents]
With the autopilot active, Kudrinsky, against regulations, offered to let them sit at the controls. First his daughter Yana took the pilot’s left front seat. Kudrinsky adjusted the autopilot’s heading to give her the impression that she was turning the plane, though she actually had no control of the aircraft. Next, his son Eldar Kudrinsky took the pilot’s seat. Unlike his sister, Eldar applied enough force to the control column to contradict the autopilot for 30 seconds.
What nobody knew was that by doing this, he completely disconnected the aileron’s autopilot: the flight computer switched the plane’s ailerons to manual control while maintaining control over the other flight systems. The plane did not audibly signal a warning that this had occurred, although an indicator light did come on. It apparently went unnoticed by the pilots, who had previously flown planes with an audible warning signal. The first to notice a problem was Eldar, who observed that the plane was banking right. Shortly after, the flight path indicator changed to show the new flight path of the aircraft as it turned. Since the turn was continuous, the resulting predicted flight path drawn on screen was a 180 degree turn. This indication is similar to the indications shown when in a holding pattern, where a 180 degree turn is intentional to remain in one place. This confused the pilots for nine seconds.
Soon the plane banked past a 45-degree angle (steeper than it was designed for). This increased the g-force on the pilots and crew, making their bodies feel much heavier than usual, and making it impossible for the Captain to replace his son at the controls. After banking as much as 90 degrees, the remaining functions of the autopilot tried to correct the plane’s altitude by putting the plane in an almost vertical ascent, nearly stalling the plane. The co-pilot and Eldar managed to get the plane into a nosedive, which reduced the G-force on the pilots and enabled the Captain to take the controls. Though he and his co-pilot did regain control, their altitude by then was too low to recover, and the plane crashed at high speed, killing all aboard. The wreckage was located on a remote hillside approximately 25km from Mezhdurechensk in Kemarovo Oblast, southwest Siberia.
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