Shocking Black Box Tape Shows Pilot Let His Children Into The Cockpit During Flight

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I suppose a lot of us will be the first to admit that, before settling in, we have had a quick peek into the plane's cockpit, regardless of how many flights we have made in our time.

Although the cockpit door is often closed when boarding begins, when it is open, it provides a fascinating view for any aviation enthusiasts.

It used to be fairly popular to visit the pilots and get a look inside the cockpit, usually following a landing.

But those days are long gone, for a variety of reasons, one of which being this 1994 journey from Moscow to Hong Kong.

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Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky, a relief pilot, made the decision to let his children, Eldar and Yana, experiment with the aircraft's controls in the cockpit.

In March 1994, Russian airline Aeroflot was operating Flight 593 from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, carrying 63 passengers, nine flight attendants, and three pilots.

Eldar, 16, and Yana, 12, stepped into the cockpit to see their father while they were on the flight.

Yaroslav made the decision to let his kids tinker with the aircraft's controls while they were in the cockpit.

Yana is heard griping to her father on a voice recording of their conversation, just before he warns her, "Don't run there, or they'll fire us."

Yana had no actual control over the airplane when she played with the controls because the autopilot was activated.

When it was Eldar's time, her older brother, applied enough pressure to the controls to turn off the autopilot for a good thirty seconds.

This was sufficient to give the teenager unintentional partial control over the aircraft.

Eldar eventually realized that something was wrong when the aircraft began to veer to the right and leave the flying path.

The Airbus A310 aircraft is not designed to swerve at nearly a ninety-degree angle, but in the few seconds it took the three pilots to realize what had happened, the aircraft swerved.

The aircraft descended quickly before stalling and plunging into an automated dive to go back to the surface.

The jet eventually came out of the dive thanks to the pilots' eventual recovery of control, but they miscalculated the force and the aircraft stalled once more.

"Move to the rear! Eldar, head to the back!" Yaroslav shouts amid the pilots' struggle to maintain control.

"You see the danger, don't you?"

As the three pilots frantically strive to correct the error and regain control of the aircraft, Yaroslav instructs his children, "Get out now! All is normal."

The recording abruptly ends at that moment. 

Despite the pilots successfully stabilizing the aircraft, it had descended too much by then, leading to a tragic crash into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range, resulting in the loss of all lives on board.

Investigations conducted following the accident revealed no proof of a technical problem and concluded that the children's ability to take control of the aircraft was most likely the cause of the crash.

The most heartbreaking finding may have been that all three of the passengers would have lived if the three pilots had let the autopilot handle the recovery instead of trying to address the issue manually.

After the incident, an Aeroflot spokesperson mentioned that they had improved cockpit discipline.