Aeroflot Flight 593

Aeroflot
Industry	Airline
Founded	March 17, 1923; 103 years ago in Moscow, Russia
Headquarters	Moscow, Russia
Products	Air transport services
Website	www.aeroflot.ru

Adapted from the English Wikipedia article Aeroflot Flight 593, available under CC BY-SA 4.0Updated 9 August 2025

Aeroflot Flight 593 was a scheduled international service flying from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. On 23 March 1994, the Aeroflot-operated Airbus A310-304 tragically crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range within Kemerovo Oblast, resulting in the deaths of all 63 passengers and 12 crew members aboard.

Analysis of the cockpit voice recorder and flight data revealed that the relief captain’s teenage children were present in the cockpit at the time of the accident. The captain’s 15-year-old son accidentally disengaged the autopilot controls partially, which then led to a complete autopilot shutdown. This caused the aircraft to enter a steep bank followed by an almost vertical dive. Although the first officer managed to stabilize the plane temporarily, an excessive corrective maneuver triggered a stall and spin. After briefly regaining control, the aircraft descended below a recoverable altitude and ultimately crashed, with no survivors.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a leased Airbus A310-304 bearing registration , serial number 596, delivered new to Aeroflot on 11 December 1992. It was equipped with two General Electric CF6-80C2A2 engines. The airframe first flew as on 11 September 1991 and was among five A310s operated by Russian International Airlines, an independent Aeroflot subsidiary handling routes to the Russian Far East and Southeast Asia. The three-person flight crew had accumulated an average of approximately 900 hours flying this aircraft type.

Passengers and crew

Among the 63 passengers, 40 were Russian citizens, including roughly 30 airline staff and their relatives. The other 23 passengers mainly consisted of business professionals from Hong Kong and Taiwan, traveling for economic ventures in Russia.

The captain, Andrey Viktorovich Danilov, was 40 years old and had been employed by Aeroflot since November 1992. He logged over 9,500 flight hours, with around 950 on the A310. First officer Igor Vasilyevich Piskaryov, aged 33, joined in October 1993 and had accumulated 5,885 flight hours, including 440 on this aircraft model. The relief captain Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky was aged 39; he began working for Aeroflot in November 1992 and possessed more than 8,940 hours total flight experience, including 907 on the A310 and prior service on other Soviet planes. Nine cabin attendants were also on board.

Accident

Shortly after midnight on 23 March 1994, Flight 593 was airborne from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, bound for Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong with a total of 75 people onboard. Relief captain Kudrinsky had brought his two children along for their first international journey and allowed them into the cockpit during his watch. At that time, five individuals occupied the flight deck: Kudrinsky; first officer Piskaryov; Kudrinsky’s son Eldar (15) and daughter Yana (13); plus another pilot traveling as a passenger.

While autopilot was engaged, Kudrinsky permitted his children to handle the controls despite regulations forbidding this. At approximately 00:43, Yana took the left front seat while Kudrinsky adjusted autopilot heading settings to simulate flying inputs. Eldar then moved into the pilot’s seat at around 00:51.

Within four minutes of Eldar sitting at the controls, he applied sufficient force on the control column to override autopilot functions for about half a minute, allowing partial manual control of ailerons. A silent warning light indicating autopilot disengagement activated but went unnoticed by the crew due to unfamiliarity with such alerts.

Eldar observed that the plane was banking rightward; meanwhile, instruments displayed a continuous turn similar to a holding pattern’s required 180° maneuver. This caused confusion among pilots for nine seconds as the aircraft banked beyond a safe angle—passing 45° and nearing nearly 90°—which exceeded Airbus A310 design limits and triggered a rapid descent. The increasing g-forces complicated recovery efforts.

Initially, autopilot responded by pitching up and adding engine thrust but eventually disengaged as aerodynamic stall developed. An automatic system lowered the nose into a dive. Kudrinsky returned to his seat; first officer Piskaryov pulled out of the dive but then over-corrected into an almost vertical climb that resulted in another stall followed by a spin. Although control was briefly regained afterward, excessive yoke inputs caused airspeed loss leading to a second flat spin. While wings were leveled once more, altitude had dropped below what was needed for recovery.

The crash occurred at approximately 00:58 with a high vertical velocity near 70 meters per second. From when Eldar first took control until impact spanned sixteen minutes; all occupants perished.

The aircraft impacted with landing gear retracted; passengers were secured in their seats prepared for emergency landing. No distress signals were sent prior to collision. Investigators found no evidence of mechanical malfunction; instead, pilot errors related to improper control inputs caused loss of aircraft stability. Wreckage was located on an isolated slope in the Kuznetsk Alatau mountains near Mezhdurechensk, Kemerovo Oblast. Flight data recorders were recovered two days later. Relatives of those lost visited the site to honor victims.

Aftermath

Initially, Aeroflot refuted claims that children had been present in the cockpit during the incident. However, this was later confirmed when a Moscow-based magazine released the cockpit voice recorder transcript in late September 1994. According to the Associated Press, the transcript revealed that "the Russian crew nearly managed to save the aircraft." The New York Times highlighted that although the crew came close to rescuing the Airbus along with its 75 passengers, their efforts were compromised by the presence of children in the cockpit and a lack of familiarity with the foreign-manufactured aircraft. This perspective was further supported by an aviation specialist's evaluation published in .

In popular culture

The story of Flight 593 was depicted in the 2005 episode "Kid in the Cockpit" from the Canadian series Mayday, which is also known internationally as Air Emergency, Air Disasters, or Air Crash Investigation. Additionally, the flight was featured in a 2007 special edition of Mayday titled "Who's Flying the Plane?" Michael Crichton's 1996 novel Airframe incorporates elements inspired by this accident as well as China Eastern Airlines Flight 583.

References

Notes

Further reading

External links