Eldar was 15 years old when his father invited him to sit at the controls of an Airbus A310.
It was the early morning of March 23, 1994, and Aeroflot Flight 593 was crossing Siberia with 63 passengers and 12 crew members bound for Hong Kong. Captain Yaroslav Kudrinsky, the relief pilot, broke protocol and let his two children into the cockpit. No one imagined that the weight of the teenager’s hands on the control wheel would be enough to partially disconnect the autopilot, without any instrument indicating it.
The plane began to bank to the right, more and more, until it plunged into a steep descent. The pilots regained control for a few seconds, but the correction was excessive: the Airbus stalled and spun uncontrollably. At 1:58 in the morning, it crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountains. All 75 people on board died.
Aeroflot initially denied that there had been children in the cockpit. The voice recorder later revealed the whole truth.
