Wife of pilot who let children fly plane before it crashed and killed all onboard relived moment she found out
The wife of the pilot who let his children fly the plane before it crashed has recalled the devastating moment she learned what had happened to her family.
Aeroflot Flight 593 crashed on 23 March 1994 as it travelled between Moscow and Hong Kong, with all 75 people on board tragically dying after the plane collided with a mountain range.
It has since become one of the deadliest aviation disasters in history, which occurred shortly after relief captain Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky invited his two children, Eldar, 15, and Yana, 13, into the cockpit.
Both were allowed into the pilot's seat to try flying the plane, which was on autopilot at this point, but tragedy struck when he allowed his son to take the wheel.
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Yaroslav pushed the control stick for over 30 seconds, which was long enough to override the autopilot and switch certain aircraft functions back to manual control.
A warning light had come on, but it went unnoticed by the pilots. Unsurprisingly, the teenager quickly lost control of the plane as the autopilot's active parts went against his actions; however, the experienced pilots were unable to rectify the situation after the aircraft stalled and spun out of control.
The plane dropped rapidly and collided with a mountain in Russia at speeds of around 160mph. There were no survivors, with the airline initially suggesting that the pilots weren't at fault, until the black box recording, which heard the father telling his children to 'get out now', was released to the public, and it proved otherwise.
In the 2005 episode of the documentary Mayday: Air Disaster, Kudrinsky's wife, Victoria Kudrinsky, spoke out for the first time about her initial reaction to the news, which had claimed the lives of both her husband and her two young children.
She said: "For some time, they wouldn't tell me anything specific, and only on the next day, the airline director told me there was no hope whatsoever.
"It was a horrible moment, of course. It's hard to believe."
The heartbreaking moment was perhaps far worse for Victoria when the black box recording was released, as it allowed her to listen to her husband's final words.
In the black box recording, Kudrinsky could be heard shouting: "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!"
Topics: Russia
James Moorhouse