Shocking timeline of events after plane crashed and killed all onboard when pilot let children fly the aircraft
On 23 March 1994, Aeroflot Flight 593 crashed into a mountain range in Russia resulting in the deaths of all 75 people on board.
The accumulation of factors which built up to this aviation disaster started minutes before the crash after the man who was in charge of the plane at the time invited his children into the cockpit.
After letting them sit in the pilot's seat and think they were operating the controls, things went badly wrong as one of the kids did actually push the controls hard enough to disable some parts of the autopilot, with nobody in the cockpit noticing until it was too late.
An investigation into the crash used the black box recordings to show that the plane's final few moments had been panic and confusion as the pilots attempted to regain control of the aircraft.
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However, their efforts were unsuccessful and would end with the plane colliding with the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range at high speed.
What follows is a timeline of events from the plane taking off to the point it crashed.
8.39pm, 22 March
Aeroflot Flight 593 takes off from Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow with 75 people on board, 63 passengers and 12 crew members, and is headed for Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong.
The aircraft was under the command of captain Andrew Viktorovich Danilov, alongside first officer Igor Vasilyevich Piskaryov, while also in the cockpit was relief captain Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky.
The job of the relief captain is to assume the role's duties for a period of time and give the captain a break.
On board the flight were Kudrinsky's children, son Eldar, 15, and his daughter Yana, 13.
9.18pm
It was at this time that the passenger plane reached an altitude of around 33,000ft and was flying at that level for most of the remainder of the flight before disaster struck.
The aircraft's autopilot systems were engaged.
12.26am, 23 March
The cockpit voice recorder picks up conversation that indicates Kudrinsky had taken a position on the left side of the cockpit in the pilot's seat, with Piskaryov in the right seat and captain Danilov resting in the passenger cabin.
At this point, it's Kudrinsky's aircraft and the flight has little over 30 minutes before it crashes.
12.40am
Kudrinsky and Piskaryov are joined in the cockpit by Vladimir Makarov, another pilot travelling as a passenger, along with Eldar and Yana.
The relief pilot had wanted his children to come into the plane's cockpit so they could see where their father worked.
12.43am
The plane's black box recording picks up Kudrinsky saying to his daughter 'come sit here in my seat, would you like that?', with him getting out of the pilot's chair so Yana could sit there.
Despite getting out of the pilot's chair, he was still technically in charge of the plane since he never formally handed over control to Piskaryov.
12.47am
Kudrinsky encourages his daughter to 'fly the aeroplane a bit', says to her 'Yana, are you going to fly it' and tells the 13-year-old 'go ahead, take the controls'.
With the autopilot engaged there was not much the child could actually do and despite the girl's hands on the controls, she wasn't actually flying the plane.
During this time the aircraft carried out a manoeuvre where it turned left, Yana being in the pilot's seat did not have a meaningful impact on the flight path with her father instead showing her how to change the plane's heading using autopilot functions.
There was no need for the plane to carry out this manoeuvre.
12.51am
It's at this point that Yana gets out of the seat and her brother Eldar takes her place.
Makarov, the pilot on board the plane as a passenger, took a picture of the boy in the captain's seat as he was heard to say: "Let's get a picture of the pilot."
Eldar asked him whether he was taking a picture and Makarov said he was.
12.54am
Kudrinsky attempts to make the plane carry out the same manoeuvre he did when Yana was in the pilot's seat, and Eldar asks whether he can move the controls asking 'can I turn this, the control' and his dad telling him 'yes'.
The relief pilot told his son: "OK, watch the ground, where you're going to turn. Go to the left, turn to the left!"
However, Eldar pushed on the controls for too long and certain functions of the autopilot disengaged and switched to manual, which the pilots in the cockpit didn't notice.
Eldar had pushed on the control stick for over 30 seconds with inputs up to 10kg, enough to contradict the autopilot, the Russian pilots were not used to non-audible signs that the autopilot had disengaged.
12.55am
With some of the plane being flown by a 15-year-old boy who wasn't a pilot and the autopilot still running other parts of the plane, things were headed for disaster.
For a few seconds, Kudrinsky is recorded as being distracted by his daughter, as the plane went from banking left to banking right and kept banking further.
Those who ought to have been flying the plane didn't notice it until Eldar asked 'why is it turning'.
Attempts to stop the plane from rolling instead stalled it and the black box recording of Kudrinsky showed that he'd shouted: "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 plane banked to an angle of 90 degrees and the plane couldn't turn from the steep angle.
The aircraft went into a dive which the pilots managed to pull out of, but they overcorrected and the plane ended up almost vertical, with it stalling again.
Going into a spin, the plane dropped below the safe altitude for flying in the area it was situated.
12.58am
Unable to regain altitude, the plane slammed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range at a speed of around 160mph, everybody on board was killed on impact.
Topics: Russia
Joe Harker