One of the most infamous plane crashes ever was likely caused by a small decision – an experienced pilot inviting his children into the cockpit.
It used to be a common enough for little kids on long flights to see the cockpit and be shown the controls, although this rarely extended to actually being able to sit in the pilot’s seat.
But in 1994, relief captain Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky had his own children aboard a flight he was taking from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Russia to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong.
The Aeroflot plane had 75 people aboard, including the two children – his 13-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son.
Kudrinsky took them up into the cockpit once the plane had taken off and was steady, then put into autopilot mode.
He then let his daughter sit in a piloting seat to feel as though she was flying the plane. Next, his son got to do the same, but as the black box flight recorder later revealed, something clearly went wrong.
The boy somehow accidentally turned on manual control of the plane, meaning his playing with the flight controls was having real effects.
As he wrestled with the flight controls, autopilot was first turned off and then actually physically disengaged since he was making moves that it wasn’t designed to accommodate.
At this point, a pretty distressing audio recording of the pilot’s cabin, recovered from the plane after it was found, reveals that the plane entered a steep banking turn that alerted the piloting crew to the problem.
They sprung into action, moving the children away and attempting to stop the plane from spinning out of control.
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The flight recorder shows the plane banking steeply, seeming to nearly get under control but then entering a near-vertical climb that sees it stall and then eventually spin down through the air.
Despite their best efforts, the pilots were unable to get the plane back on the ascent, and it eventually fell out of the air and crashed into a mountainside below its flight plan.
The Cockpit Voice Recorder Database has reported the pilots’ chilling final words, as they scrambled to rectify the situation.
Kudrinsky is heard sobbing, saying: “Full power,” while his co-pilot, Igor Vasilyevich Piskaryov, replies: “Speed is very high.”
Piskaryov later says: “We’re coming out, coming out!”, Kudrinsky replies: “Done,” and then Piskaryov adds with panic: “Gently! … Shit, not again.”
The last few words are largely unintelligible, with Kudrinsky reportedly heard saying before impact: “We’ll get out of this. Everything’s fine… Gently [unintelligible], gently… Pull up gently!”
It took just a few minutes from the moment when Kudrinsky’s son accidentally disengaged the autopilot to when the plane was completely destroyed, killing all 75 people aboard.
This might not be the only reason why you’re not allowed in the cockpit anymore when flying, but it certainly might have played a part.