Here are the haunting final words of a pilot who made the fatal decision to allow his children to sit in the cockpit and pretend to fly the plane.
On 23 March, 1994 one of the most tragic, and arguably avoidable, crashes happened which caused the deaths of all 75 people onboard.
Aeroflot Flight 593 was heading from Moscow to Hong Kong on a late night flight. Onboard was captain Andrew Viktorovich Danilov, an experienced pilot who’d clocked around 9,500 hours of flight experience alongside first officer Igor Vasilyevich Piskaryov and relief captain Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky.
While the three pilots were more than experienced to handle the controls of a commercial jet, none of the men could account for human error caused by children sitting at the plane’s controls.

The tragedy occurred on an Aeroflot flight (JoanValls/Urbanandsport /NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The flight was first international trip for Kudrinsky’s kids Yana, 13, and Eldar, 15, with the pilot wanting to mark the children’s first trip by allowing them into the cockpit to see where their father worked.
Despite being against regulations, the crew onboard believed it would be safe as the plane was on autopilot, which meant the children wouldn’t actually be in control of aircraft.
First into her father’s seat was Yana, who sat down in-front of the controls as around 00:43am and pretended to ‘fly’ the plane while it was on autopilot.
Kudrinsky’s son was next into the chair and was allowed to move the controls and pretend to fly the plane at around 00:51am.
Disaster would strike just under four minutes later.
At 00:54am, the teenager manipulated 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, which then changed the flight control settings to manual.

A slight indicator light flashed up to inform the crew that Eldar was now in partial control of the plane, however the crew weren’t used to non-soviet aircraft and failed to notice the warning.

The aircraft then entered a bank, with the autopilot unable to maintain altitude due to the angle of the wings.
Captain Kudrinsky then ordered the co-pilot to take control as he got his son away from his seat so he could take command of the aircraft.
“Eldar, get away. Go to the back, go to the back Eldar! You see the danger don’t you,” Kudrinsky could be heard saying on cockpit voice recording.
“Go away, go away Eldar! Go away, go away. I tell you to go away!”
The pilots then attempted to regain control of the aircraft and were nearly successful in doing so, however they accidentally over corrected and sent the plane into an almost vertical climb, stalling and sending it into a spin.

The pilots attempted to regain control, but were ultimately unable to do so (YouTube/MorfoAtari)
It began to lose altitude, and eventually descended beneath the minimum safe altitude for the flight at the section of its route over mountainous terrain.
At 00:59, air traffic control in nearby Novokuznetsk were waiting for a position update through radio transmission from the flight, but it never came, as the flight stopped appearing on their radar screens.
It turns out that at 00:58, just two minutes and six seconds after the events unfolded, Flight 593 crashed in a flat altitude at high vertical speed, estimated to be around 160mph, in the Kuznetsk Alatau Mountain range in the Kemerovo Oblast region of southern Russia.
The aircraft was destroyed, killing everyone onboard.
Aeroflot initially attempted to deny the pilots were at fault, however the above transcript would ultimately be published, confirming the crash was human error.
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/MorfoAtari

Updated 09:10 2 Oct 2024 GMT+1
Published 08:41 2 Oct 2024 GMT+1
Chilling words of fighter jet pilot who witnessed ‘ghost plane’ crash that killed all 115 passengers and crew onboard
A Boeing plane crashed just north of Athens on 14 August, 2005, killing everyone on board
Brenna Cooper
Brenna Cooper
The chilling words of a fighter pilot who witnessed a plane crash into the mountainside have resurfaced online.
In August, 2005, Greece was devastated when Helios Airways Flight 522 crashed into a mountainside just north of Athens – killing 115 passengers and six crew members onboard.
The plane had departed from Larnaca in Cyprus just after 9am on 14 August and was destined for Prague, via a quick stopover in Athens.
However ground crew in the Greek capital would be left baffled after their radio calls to Flight 522 went unanswered. The aircraft was last heard from shortly after departing Larnaca airport when the pilots reported an air conditioning warning to ground staff.
Fighter jets were then scrambled after air traffic control staff after they were unable to get in contact with the pilots amid concerns of a hijacking or terrorism incident.
But what they’d find was arguably even more chilling.

After locating Flight 522 circling aimlessly above Athens, fighter pilots noted the first officer slumped in his seat at the controls, while the captain’s seat was left vacant. Inside the cabin, passengers were unconscious, despite oxygen masks dangling in-front of them.
The fighter jet pilots were helpless to watch on as the ‘ghost flight’ flew aimlessly around in the sky, well aware of the impending disaster which awaited.
All passengers and crew onboard the flight were alive, but unconscious, with the exception of flight attendant Andreas Prodromou who was awake and desperately attempting to steer the plane to safety. While a qualified pilot, Prodromou had no experience with flying the Boeing 737-31S plane and was unable to prevent the flight’s final destination.
Just under three hours after take off Flight 522’s engines failed within 10 minutes of each other and Prodromou pointed weakly down to the fighter pilots, who were helpless to watch as the aircraft slammed into a hillside near the village of Grammatiko.

The incident was caused by a loss in cabin pressure (Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)
The devastated words of one of the fighter jets who witnessed the crash would later resurface online.
In the audio, which is between the pilot and crew on the ground, the pilot can be heard saying: “Mayday, mayday. Mambo, we have a civilian plane crash. We have a civilian plane crash. Mayday, mayday.
“Mayday, mayday. Athens, the civilian plane crashed to a mountain peak.”