Aeroflot Flight 593
Accident | |
---|---|
Date | 23 March 1994 |
Summary | Stall due to pilot error following autopilot being turned off by minor |
Site | 20 km (12 mi) E of Mezhdurechensk, Russia 53°18′03″N 88°08′59″E / 53.30083°N 88.14972°E |
Aircraft | |
Aircraft type | Airbus A310-304 |
Aircraft name | Glinka |
Operator | Aeroflot – Russian International Airlines |
IATA flight No. | SU593 |
ICAO flight No. | AFL593 |
Call sign | AEROFLOT 593 |
Registration | F-OGQS |
Flight origin | Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russia |
Destination | Kai Tak Airport, Hong Kong |
Occupants | 75 |
Passengers | 63 |
Crew | 12 |
Fatalities | 75 |
Survivors | 0 |
Aeroflot Flight 593 was a passenger flight from Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russia, to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. On 23 March 1994, the aircraft operating the route, an Airbus A310-304 flown by Aeroflot, crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range in Kemerovo Oblast, killing all 63 passengers and 12 crew members on board.
No evidence of a technical malfunction was found. Cockpit voice and flight data recorders revealed the presence of the relief captain's 13-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son in the cockpit.[1] While seated at the controls, the pilot's son had unknowingly partially disengaged the A310's
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft involved in the accident was a leased
Passengers and crew
Of the 63 passengers on board, 40 were Russian nationals,[4] including about 30 airline employees and family members.[5] The remaining 23 foreigners were mostly businessmen from Hong Kong and Taiwan, who were looking for economic opportunities in Russia.[4][5][6]
The
Accident
Shortly after midnight on 23 March 1994, the aircraft was en route from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, with 75 occupants aboard, of whom 63 were passengers.[4][7][8] Relief pilot Kudrinsky was taking his two children on their first international flight, and they were brought to the cockpit while he was on duty.[9] Five people were thus on the flight deck: Kudrinsky, co-pilot Piskaryov, Kudrinsky's son Eldar (age 15) and daughter Yana (age 13),[10] and another pilot, Vladimir Makarov, who was flying as a passenger.[11][page needed]
With the autopilot active, Kudrinsky, against regulations, let the children sit at the controls.[9][12][13] Yana took the pilot's left front seat at 00:43. Kudrinsky adjusted the autopilot heading to give her the impression that she was turning the plane, though she actually had no control of the aircraft. Shortly thereafter, at 00:51, Eldar occupied the pilot's seat.[9] Unlike his sister, Eldar applied enough force to the control column to contradict the autopilot for 30 seconds.
Just under four minutes after Eldar occupied the pilot's seat, his actions caused the flight computer to switch the plane's
Eldar was the first to notice a problem, when he observed that the plane was
The aircraft crashed with its landing gear up, and all passengers had been prepared for an emergency, as they were strapped into their seats.[15] No distress calls were made before the crash.[3] Despite the struggles of both pilots to save the aircraft, it was later concluded that if they had simply let go of the control column after the first spin, aerodynamic principles would have caused the plane to return to level flight, thus preventing the crash.[16] There was no evidence of a technical failure in the plane.[11][17]
The wreckage was located on a remote hillside in the
Aftermath
Aeroflot originally denied that children were in the cockpit, but accepted the fact when the Moscow-based magazine Obozrevatel (Russian: Обозреватель, Observer) published the transcript on the week of 28 September 1994. The Associated Press said, according to the transcript, "the Russian crew almost succeeded in saving the plane".[10] The New York Times said, "A transcript of the tape printed in the magazine Obozrevatel shows that the Russian crew nearly managed to save the Airbus plane and the 75 people on board, but that it was hampered by the presence of children and its unfamiliarity with the foreign-made plane."[12] The Times also stated that an analysis by an aviation expert published in Rossiiskiye Vesti (Russian: Российские вести, Russian News) supported that analysis.[12]
The events of Flight 593 were featured in "Kid in the Cockpit", a season-three (2005) episode of the Canadian TV series Mayday[6] (called Air Emergency and Air Disasters in the U.S. and Air Crash Investigation in the UK and elsewhere around the world). The flight was also included in a Mayday season six (2007) Science of Disaster special titled "Who's Flying the Plane?"[19] Michael Crichton's novel Airframe, published in 1996, draws on events from the accidents of Aeroflot 593 and China Eastern Airlines Flight 583.[20]
See also
- Aeroflot accidents and incidents
- Aeroflot accidents and incidents in the 1990s
- National Airlines Flight 27, where in-flight experimentation caused an uncontained engine failure
- Northwest Airlines Flight 188, where the pilots stopped monitoring the flight
- Pinnacle Airlines Flight 3701, a crash where the pilots chose, for fun, to exceed aircraft limits
- Aeroflot Flight 6502, a crash in which the pilots bet they could land blind
- United Airlines Flight 2885, a crash where the pilots let the engineer fly the plane
References
- ^ a b "Report on the investigation into the crash of A310-308, registration F-OGQS, on 22 March 1994 near the city of Mezhdurechensk]. (English translation)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 July 2017.
- ^ a b "Aeroflot F-OGQS". Airfleets.net. Archived from the original on 15 August 2019. Retrieved 12 September 2011.
- ^ a b c d "Airbus A310 crashes in Russia". Flight International. 30 March – 5 April 1994. p. 5. Archived from the original on 7 October 2012.
- ^ a b c "75 Dead in a Crash of a Russian Airbus on Hong Kong Run". The New York Times. 23 March 1994. Archived from the original on 7 March 2016. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
- ^ a b Goldberg, Carey (3 April 1994). "Pilot's Son May Have Caused Air Crash in Russia". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 19 May 2019. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
- ^ National Geographic Channel.
- ^ Aviation Safety Network
- ^ "Airline safety review – Fatal accidents: scheduled passenger flights". Flight International. 20–26 July 1994. p. 31. Archived from the original on 6 November 2012. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
- ^ a b c "Transcript reveals cockpit anarchy". Flight International. 5–11 October 1994. p. 5. Archived from the original on 6 November 2012. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
- ^ a b "Tape Reveals Kids Got Flying Lesson Before Crash". The Seattle Times. Associated Press. 28 September 1994. Archived from the original on 9 May 2013.
- ^ a b "Official accident investigation report" (PDF), busybee.dvv.org (in Russian), archived from the original (PDF) on 9 September 2014
- ^ a b c "Tape Confirms The Pilot's Son Caused Crash of Russian Jet". The New York Times. 28 September 1994. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
- ^
Velovich, Alexander (13–19 April 1994). "A310 crash: Conflict over child at controls' report (Page 4)". Flight International: 4–5. Archived from the original on 6 November 2012. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
"A310 crash: Conflict over child at controls' report (Page 5)". Flight International. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 5 March 2021. - ^ Facts, Ultimate. "Ultimate Facts". ultimate-facts.com. Archived from the original on 1 December 2021. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
- ^ a b Velovich, Alexander (6–12 April 1994). "Aeroflot A310 crash continues to puzzle". Flight International. p. 8. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
- ^ a b Cloudberg, Admiral (19 January 2023). "Fathers and Sons: The crash of Aeroflot flight 593". Archived from the original on 3 April 2023. Retrieved 9 April 2023.
- ^ "A310 crash findings imminent". Flight International. 15–21 June 1994. p. 8. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
- ^ Learmount, David; Velovich, Alexander (27 April – 3 May 1994). "FDR backs A310 crash allegations". Flight International. p. 5. Archived from the original on 7 October 2016.
- National Geographic Channel.
- ISBN 0-679-44648-6.
Further reading
- Harford, Tim (6 May 2022). "When the autopilot switched off" (Audio/Podcast). Cautionary Tales.
External links
- (in Russian) Official accident report (English translation)
- "Airdisaster.com account of the crash, with wreckage photo". Archived from the original on 7 November 2015.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - Cockpit Voice Recorder transcript [unreliable source?]
- Aeroflot Flight 593 cockpit voice recording on YouTube
- Analyst of incident and review of the Final Incident Report by a commercial aircraft pilot and training captain on YouTube