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. -intro-
To gain more context of the events of that night we need to understand not only the aircraft
flying that night the Airbus A310 but also the scenario of which the Airline, Aeroflot
sought such an aircraft in the first place. This is relevant because of the differences
in which certain aircraft systems in this case the Autopilot and primary flight displays
were developed in the Soviet Union compared to Europe and the United States for reasons
we will discuss later. A few years prior to the accident of flight
593, the old Soviet Union collapsed. A new Russia was forming. During the times of the Soviet Union, Aeroflot
had a monopoly in the country’s air travel. Even today Aeroflot is one of the largest
airlines in the world but even in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the carrier flew
around 90,000,000 passengers per year. This all changed following the 1991 collapse
of the USSR. Hundreds of smaller carriers sprang up out
of the ashes of the Soviet Aeroflot. The New Aeroflot now had to compete with other
carriers. Not only that, the restricted airspace over
Russia which forced Europe to Asia flights to be routed around Russia was opened. Aeroflot needed to compete for traffic through
to Asia and thus sought out some new planes to act as the flagship fleet to fly these
routes. The then modern Airbus A310-300 was the ideal
plane and only Aeroflot’s best pilots were promoted to fly it. The pilots themselves were trained on the
A310 courtesy of Lufthansa in Germany. The A310 was introduced in 1983 and the 300
variant in 1985. The plane was one of the most technologically
sophisticated planes of its time. Airbus had been experimenting with a new philosophical
approach to piloting aircraft and implemented what they call a “fly-by-wire” system
on the Airbus A320. Though some Fly by Wire functionality made
into the A310. This technology puts more computerized systems
in operation of the flight controls on the A310 instead of the traditional flight surface
mechanics. It is an immense leap for the Aeroflot pilots
who made the switch from old soviet planes. The Autopilot on the older Airbus’ namely
the A300 and A310 were made like that to be something similar to Boeing’s Autopilot. But more on the Autopilot later. The A310 itself being a redesigned version
of the A300, Airbus’ first passenger plane. The later variants of the A300 featured a
cockpit similar to that of the new A310. Aeroflot acquired 5 of these A310s from Airbus
under a lease, all under French registrations. The planes were painted in a new modern livery
which was short lived and was only ever seen on the A310s. One of the pilots chosen to fly the A310 was
39-year-old Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky. By the time of flight 593 he had accumulated
907 hours on the A310. Most of the other 8,000 flight hours came
from experience flying soviet aircraft such as the Ilyushin 76, Yakovlev Yak-40 and Antonov
An-12. On flight 593, Kudrinsky was to serve as the
relief Captain. Before we discuss the other flight crew members
and the sequential events of the accident, we need to highlight that Captain Kudrinsky
on this trip to Hong Kong was bringing his two children. Eldar and Yana Kudrinsky. The ages of Kudrinsky’s children varies
depending on the source however the accident report states that Eldar, the eldest was 15
while Yana was 13. Mrs. Kudrinsky was staying behind in Moscow
on this occasion. The Children had accompanied their father
of trips before however this was to be their first international trip to a new country. Going with the Kudrinsky’s to Hong Kong
that evening and accompanying the Kudrinsky children in the cabin was a family friend
by the name of Vladimir Makarov, also an Aeroflot pilot. He was off duty only travelling as a passenger
on this occasion. He was also travelling with his daughter. The whole flight crew were as follows. Piloting the Airbus out of Moscow as the Captain
was 40-year-old Captain Viktorovich Danilov. Like his fellow pilots on board, he is still
new to the A310 with just under 1,000 hours logged on the plane. In the right-hand seat was Relief Captain
Yaroslav Kudrinsky who we have already discussed. He would take over from Captain Danilov and
sit in the left seat when he takes his scheduled rest break. Behind the two pilots, seated in the jump
seat during the first phase of the flight was the First Officer, 33-year-old Igor Piskaryov. With just 440 hours in the A310 he was the
least experienced member of the crew. In the cabin were 9 flight attendants and
63 passengers. The cabin was only partly filled as many of
the seats remained unoccupied. Aeroflot flight 593 departed Moscow’s Sheremetyevo
Airport on March 22nd, 1994, at 4:39pm local time, heading to Hong Kong. It’s a flight of around 10 hours. As routine, the plane navigated out of the
Moscow airspace climbing to a cruising altitude of 10,100 meters. It should be noted that meters was the unit
the flight crew were using in reference to Altitude. This was standard in Russia at the time being
only one of a few countries which used meters. Even pilots flying in from outside of Russia
needed to convert their measurements to reflect this. Programmed into the flight computer was the
entire route the plane was to fly along. Waypoint after waypoint in succession the
flight computer, interacting with the autopilot was keeping the plane on track to Hong Kong. The recovered cockpit voice recording began
recording once the flight crew and switch positions. At some point prior to this, Captain Danilov
had left his seat and was out of the flight deck, officially off duty. Likely he was sitting in the cabin. Relief captain Kudrinsky was in the left seat
while First Officer Piskaryov was in the right seat. The time, relative to Moscow was approaching
8:30pm. The Airbus was midway across Russia with the
local time in the Kemerovo region being around 12:30am the date now having gone into March
23rd. The Flight crew can been in communication
with Air Traffic Control in Novosibirsk and Novokuznetsk and were passing over the Kemerovo
Oblast, it’s a region of Russia between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. At around Twenty to One in the morning Local
Time, Vladimir Makarov who had been supervising the Kudrinsky Children in the cabin opened
the flight deck door and himself and the children entered surprising their father on the job. Prior to 9/11 it was not uncommon for passengers
to visit the flight deck especially children with permission from the captain. Had the events in the following minutes played
out differently this itself would not have been seen as a cause for concern. The Children Yana and Eldar have been on the
flight deck for three minutes. At 12:43, Captain Yaroslav Kudrinsky asks
if his 13-year-old daughter wants to sit in the captain’s seat. This, even in the days before 9/11 would have
been seen as crossing a line to every pilot and aviation expert. There was no formal transfer of the flight
controls to the First Officer, therefore Kudrinsky was still responsible for the safety and operation
of the plane. He had now allowed his 13-year-old daughter
to sit in his seat and even allowed her to manipulate the Control Wheel in what is a
major breach in international aviation regulations. Once raising the seat high enough for Yana
to feel comfortable, she puts her hands on the Control Wheel. Captain Kudrinsky then manipulates the autopilot
in a way that it would make Yana feel as if she was flying the plane. Kudrinsky switch the Autopilot navigation
to the heading mode, taking the Airbus off of its programmed flight path to fly a specific
heading, in this case left around 10 degrees to heading 102. This banked the plane slightly to give Yana
the illusion of flying the plane. The heading was turned back to where it was
and the Nav mode was re-engaged putting the plane back on track for Hong Kong. Yana would spend around 7 and a half minutes
in the captain’s seat, in this time First Officer Igor Piskaryov spoke to Novokuznetsk
Air Traffic Control about their positioning. Yana then left the captain’s seat and 15-year-old
Eldar then took over at 12:51. The off-duty Aeroflot pilot Vladimir Makarov
supposedly videotaped and took photographs which were later found in the plane’s wreckage
confirming further that the children were indeed in the captain’s seat. Just to emphasize, there were three Aeroflot
pilots on the flight deck who did not raise any concerns about this situation. Using the same maneuver as he did with Yana,
Captain Kudrinsky manipulated the autopilot once again this time giving Eldar the illusion
he was flying the plane. Captain Kudrinsky interacted differently with
Eldar than he did with Yana by vocally expressing a turn to the left. Eldar turned the control wheel 3 to 4 degrees
to the left. He applied a little more pressure to the controls
than his sister but still the Autopilot was in command and was placed into the Heading
mode once again by his father, the autopilot responding appropriately. The plane banked to the left and Captain Kudrinsky
then turned the plane back to the right on course for Hong Kong again by switching back
to Nav mode. It was what happened next when things changed
as Eldar continued to apply pressure on the controls, this time to the right following
the Autopilot command. Now back in Navigation mode, the controls
to Eldar would appear to become stiff, he applied a bit more pressure to the controls. For research of this video, I found myself
digging deeper down into the rabbit hole that is the A310’s systems. I have watched and listened to multiple documentaries
and presentations of this incident which state that the pressure that Eldar put on the Control
Wheel disconnected or “Declutched” a part of the plane’s autopilot, the part which
controls the Aileron’s. Therefore the plane’s roll was now in manual
control. This explanation is not wrong and is what
a lot of sources say, however I know there is more to it than that. The Accident report available had not helped
me much as it is A, An English translation so some detail may have been lost during that
conversion process and B, only 22 pages which by the standards of most major accident reports
is very short and did not give the level of technical detail I desired. So I reached out for some help and spoke to
some people who may know more about the A310s autopilot than I could ever understand. I reached out to the developers of faithful
simulated reconstruction of the plane built for the X-plane Flight Simulator. iniBuilds developed this piece of software
from the ground up simulating and modelling the plane’s systems, cockpit, autopilot,
and logic. If there are people outside of Airbus who
know the most about this aircraft, this was a good place to look. I will leave a link in the description of
this video if you want to learn more about them and their products. After getting some more information here is
how I interpreted what happened with the Autopilot on Flight 593. The Autopilot on the A300 and A310 were built
to be more comparable to a Boeing autopilot than anything that Airbus has produced since
the Airbus A320 in the late 1980s. It has two modes to which it is governed. Up till this point, Flight 593’s Autopilot
was in Command Mode (CMD). In Command mode, there is force limit on the
manual roll functionality which when exceeded on the control wheel by Eldar had reverted
the Autopilot to a state of “Control Wheel Steering” (CWS). This disconnected the autopilot from the roll
axis and allowed the pilot or in this case 15-year-old Eldar Kudrinsky to manipulate
the roll with the help of the Autopilot. Many Boeing planes have this CWS functionality
and is jokingly referred to by some Boeing pilots as “Airbus Mode”. Eldar had exceeded the arbitrary force boundary
set by default by Airbus and could now manipulate the plane’s Ailerons freely and thus the
roll axis. The autopilot was still however in control
of the pitch and yaw axis and thus would try to keep the plane level in altitude as the
plane continued to bank. I hope that makes sense; I have stressed trying
to wrap my head around the A310 which I have come to learn is a far more convoluted plane
than I expected… Moving on. Yana, now possibly sitting in a jump seat
had distracted Captain Kudrinsky and for a time was not monitoring Eldar’s actions. Captain Kudrinsky and First Officer Piskaryov
gained their flight training and the majority of their flying experience flying soviet built
planes. Many Soviet planes such as the Tupolev 154,
the most popular and abundant plane to ever come out of the Soviet Union, have a distinctive
sound for when the autopilot mode changes. -tu154 autopilot disconnect-
The Airbus A310 while it does have an Autopilot disconnect audio alert, does not have one
for when the ailerons are declutched from the autopilot. The pilots, thinking if something abnormal
were to happen to the Autopilot would likely have expected some kind of alert. In this case, they received no such thing. Neither Captain Kudrinsky of his First Officer
noticed that the Autopilot had switched from Command to CWS and that the ailerons were
now disconnected. Eldar with his hands on the Control Wheel
inadvertently began slightly banking the plane moreover to the right. He has been in the captain’s seat for just
under four minutes. This is the cockpit voice recording from the
Flight deck during this time. -cvr-
The plane had begun banking increasingly over to the right. Eldar had no flight training whatsoever and
was unable to identify that the plane was acting abnormally. The flight crew instead pay more closer attention
to the navigation display as the plane appeared to be behaving in a way similar to that if
it were entering a holding pattern at least according to what the Off-Duty Aeroflot pilot
thought. Instead Eldar had turned the plane himself,
but they believed the autopilot was controlling the plane not Eldar. Things quickly go from abnormal to very bad
very quickly. As the plane banked beyond its design limits,
gravitational forces made it difficult for those inside the plane to move. Eldar, a child was the only person on the
flight deck with both hands on the flight controls. The Airbus A310 overbanks shutting off the
autopilot completely as you will hear from the Autopilot disconnect. -cvr-
This sound was the autopilot disconnect; the autopilot was now no longer governing any
aspect of the aircraft. Both Command and Control Wheel Steering modes
have been disengaged. In other words it was now under full manual
control to which Eldar Kudrinsky was the sole person in control of. Prior to this, the Autopilot Command was still
in control of the pitch axis and raised the nose to keep the plane on its programmed altitude
but at this extreme angle it cannot maintain said altitude thus disconnecting, and the
plane begins to drop. Flight 593 entered a steep dive plummeting
thousands of feet. The extreme gravitational forces had now pushed
everyone in the plane back into their seats making it incredibly difficult to move. As he is the only person with their hands
on the controls, Eldar was receiving instructions from his father as he could not re-take his
seat at this time. Eldar himself also cannot leave the seat. The accident report notes that as Captain
Kudrinsky said “Hold the control column” investigators believe Eldar could have interpreted
this literally and thought his father meant hold the control column in a neutral position
when in fact he needed to counter the bank. The first officer could not reach the controls
initially but was soon able to have some grasp of the control wheel but was still limited
in his ability to fly the plane. In the cabin, Captain Danilov who had left
the cockpit on his rest break would have now likely wanted to make his way back to the
flight deck to understand what was happening to his plane. He too could not leave his seat. The time was now 12:56am. The Airbus was pulled out of its initial dive
as Piskaryov manages to pull back on the controls getting the plane to climb. By this point everyone on the flight deck
would have lost lateral spatial orientation. In these moments Piskaryov overcorrects and
the Airbus begins to climb at an exceedingly high rate. -cvr-
The plane here for a brief moment had slowed and Captain Kudrinsky was able to switch seats
with his son. Once both pilots are back in their appropriate
positions, the airbus stalls, beginning a spin before it re-enters a dive. The pilots would apply maximum thrust with
Captain Kudrinsky applying rudder movement to try and stop the plane from spinning. -cvr-
For a moment, in the flight’s final seconds, it would appear the pilots had regained control
as they slowly bring the plane out from its fall, but they had simply ran out of time
and altitude. -cvr-
Aeroflot flight 593 crashed into a densely wooded hillside at 12:58 in the morning, some
eighty-five kilometers southeast of Novokuznetsk. All seventy-five people on board were killed. Investigators at the crash site discovered
that passengers were evidently prepared for an emergency indicated by the usage of the
seat belts. Initially, the crash puzzled investigators
as to them it appeared that there was at least one child in the flight deck. When they recovered the Cockpit Voice Recorder,
the tape spoke for itself as the conversations between Captain Kudrinsky and his children
evidently told the investigators the series of events which unfolded. Investigators and aviation experts were left
stunned by the revelations. Following the disaster, new pilot training
was introduced to increase cockpit discipline. Recommendations were made to Aeroflot and
the Russian Civil Aviation sector as a whole to improve safety. Aircraft manufacturers, especially Airbus
now develop ways that allow aircraft to not exceed their banking design limits and autopilot
disconnecting from the ailerons without any warning. It is also believed that the spatial disorientation
in nighttime conditions coupled with the fact the pilots simply did not have much experience
flying western planes also contributed considerably to the crash. The pilots had flown for the most of their
flying careers, Soviet built planes which used slightly different displays, most notable
on the attitude indicator These differences however will be discussed in another video. There is one more key point of interest to
make with this video in relation to the accident. You see, when researching Aeroflot Flight
593 you inevitably come across a piece of information which stipulates that if the pilots
had simply let go of the controls during the chaos, the plane would have corrected itself
because the A310 was equipped with that kind of technology. Despite my best efforts to back this up with
consistent sources, I simply can’t. Sources seem to be contradicting. The accident report does not come to this
conclusion, evidence from other sources and online discussions that I could find seem
to suggest that no such technology exists on the A310. I believe this is sourced from a 2005 documentary
on the matter. However after pouring over other sources I
must leave this question up to experts and pilots of the A310 to answer. The A310 being a plane which has now largely
been retired from Passenger service. Patreon Outro
Hi everyone. Hope you are all doing well today. Thanks once again for watching this video,
I know I already made a video on this incident around 5 years ago, but I always knew since
doing this full time that I could make a much better video of it and here we are with a
video three times the length of the original with much more detail. I’m thinking of doing something similar
to the Korean Airlines 007 video and maybe the Helios video as well. Let me know if those videos are something
you want to see. Even though you could call this a remake I
have not let it get in the way of new content for lack of better terms, as there will be
another Disaster Breakdown video coming this Tuesday on October 19th. Anyway, if you found this video interesting
be sure to subscribe as there is always a new video Every Saturday and if you want to
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out here in the end of the next video. And with that I will move onto thanking my
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