On March 23, 1994, Aeroflot Flight 593 was en route from Moscow to Hong Kong when tragedy struck. According to The Mirror, all 75 passengers and crew members perished after a chain of errors led to the aircraft’s fatal crash. The flight was operated by a skilled crew: Captain Andrei Viktorovich Danilov, First Officer Igor Vasilyevich Piskaryov, and Relief Captain Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky—pilots with thousands of hours of experience between them.
For Captain Kudrinsky, this flight was especially meaningful. His children, 13-year-old Yana and 15-year-old Eldar, were on board for their first international trip. Wanting to make it memorable, he invited them into the cockpit to see where he worked. With the autopilot engaged, the crew believed it was safe—though it violated airline policy—to let the children briefly sit at the controls.
At around 12:43 a.m., Yana took her father’s seat and playfully pretended to “fly” the plane. Moments later, Eldar took her place and began to move the control stick slightly, mimicking his father’s actions. But after holding pressure on the controls for over 30 seconds—applying forces of nearly 10 kilograms—Eldar unknowingly disconnected the autopilot.
A small indicator light flashed to warn the crew, but the signal went unnoticed. The aircraft began to bank gradually, tipping its wings and losing stability. By the time the pilots realized what had happened, the plane was already in serious danger.
Captain Kudrinsky quickly pulled his son away from the seat, shouting, “Eldar, get away! Go to the back! You see the danger, don’t you? Go away, Eldar!” The crew fought desperately to regain control, but their corrections came too late and were too extreme. The aircraft climbed sharply, stalled, and then spiraled out of control.
At approximately 12:58 a.m., Flight 593 crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range in southern Russia’s Kemerovo Oblast region. The impact destroyed the plane instantly—no one survived.
In the aftermath, Aeroflot initially denied that pilot error played a role. But when investigators examined the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recordings—later reported by The New York Times—the truth emerged. The crash was caused by human error, rule violations, and the crew’s failure to notice the autopilot’s disengagement.
