We've seen lots of plane crashes dominate the news recently but few in history have been as deadly and tragically avoidable as one in 1994.
On 23 March, 1994 Aeroflot Flight 593 was heading from Moscow to Hong Kong on a late night flight. Onboard was captain Andrew Viktorovich Danilov, alongside first officer Igor Vasilyevich Piskaryov and relief captain Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky.
It was shortly before 1am when Kudrinsky made the seemingly harmless decision to invite his kids, who were on their first ever international flight, into the cockpit so they could see properly where their father worked.
Advert
Despite it being against regulations, Yana, 13, and Eldar, 15 were brought into the cockpit to help 'fly' the plane, believing that it would be safe to do so as it was in auto-pilot at the time.
However, things quickly went wrong and led to one of the most significant plane crashes in history, with 63 passengers and 12 crew members sadly losing their lives.
Eldar was sitting in the hot seat when things went wrong at roughly 0:54am, as he managed to switch the plane's settings from auto-pilot to manual after manipulating the control stick for over 30 seconds with inputs up to 10 kilograms, which contradicted the input made by the autopilot to keep the aircraft stable and straight.
Sadly, the three pilots were unfamiliar with the non-Soviet aircraft and therefore failed to notice the change immediately, by which point it was seemingly too late.
Only when the plane started to change direction did the three pilots notice that things were going wrong, and the kids were urged to return to return to their seats and get away by their panicked father.
He ordered the co-pilot to take control as he got his son away from his seat so he could take command of the aircraft.
The cockpit voice recording, which was later released into the public, revealed what would tragically be the father's last words to his young son.
He said: "Eldar, get away. Go to the back, go to the back Eldar! You see the danger don't you. Go away, go away Eldar! Go away, go away. I tell you to go away!"
The three pilots were nearly able to rescue the situation but reportedly over-corrected, and with the plane well below the minimum safe altitude, it crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau Mountain range in the Kemerovo Oblast region of southern Russia at around 160mph.
The aircraft was destroyed, killing everyone onboard, just a few short minutes after the kids first came into the cockpit.
Aeroflot initially claimed that the the pilots were not at fault, however, the above transcript would ultimately be published, confirming the crash was caused by human error.
James Moorhouse