May 7, 2025 • 60 mins
On March 23, 1994, an Aeroflot Airbus A310 crashed in the Siberian wilderness, killing all 75 people on board. Discover how a pilot's decision to let his children visit the cockpit led to disaster when his 15-year-old son inadvertently disengaged the autopilot. Learn how confusion over the aircraft's sophisticated systems, inadequate training, and a series of misinterpretations prevented the crew from recovering control as the plane entered a fatal spiral. This preventable tragedy forever changed cockpit access policies and highlighted the unforgiving consequences of breaking aviation's fundamental safety rules.
Sources:
- Mayday: Air Crash Investigation - Season 3, Episode 10, titled "Kid in the Cockpit"
- Official accident investigation reports from the Interstate Aviation Committee
- Interviews with aviation safety experts and crash investigators
- Wikipedia page on Aeroflot Flight 593
Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online: Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod Facebook: Final Boarding Call
Credits: Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Picture this, a brand newAirbus, a three 10 cruising over
the vast Siberian wilderness.
In the cockpit.
A seasoned pilot proudly shows histeenage children the sophisticated
controls of the aircraft.
In moments what begins as a father'sinnocent display of professional
(00:22):
pride will spiral into a nightmare.
The plane begins to bankmysteriously warning lights, flash.
Confusion turns to panic asthe pilots realize they've
lost control of the aircraft.
We're about to experience.
What happens when the fundamentalrules of aviation safety are broken
(00:45):
with catastrophic consequences.
So stow your tray tables, fastenyour seat belts, and prepare for
some extreme turbulence becausethis is final boarding call.
Hello and welcome to Final Boarding Call.
(01:07):
I am your disaster obsessed host,Alice, and I am the not quite,
so obsessed, homebody husband,slightly less obsessed, Zach.
All right, before we dive in, aquick reminder to our listeners.
Please rate, review, and subscribewherever you get your podcasts.
(01:30):
We'll make stickers and if youwrite a review in, we will send
you a final boarding call sticker.
I think that'd be really cool.
So Absolutely.
Heck yeah.
Brier.
I really didn't know what to expectwith starting all this stuff.
Um, yeah.
'cause it's a pain in the ass.
No, I'm, I just mean with listeners.
I wasn't sure if it was just gonnabe something that we were recording
(01:50):
and was technically out there,but I wasn't sure it was actually
gonna really get listened to.
That's fair.
People love disaster.
I suppose you can't take your eyesoff a train crash plane crash.
Sure.
Okay.
All right.
Here we go.
This episode is, based on anair crash investigation episode.
(02:10):
This is season three, episode10, titled Kid in the Cockpit.
It is an excellent one.
They did a great job covering it.
I'm gonna put out a little bit ofa feeler, a little bit of a guess.
All right.
Now we know the basicpremise from the intro.
Mm-hmm.
I am going to guess that this15-year-old son in there was
(02:33):
looking at the buttons, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Obviously has no idea what'sgoing on and accidentally.
Hit a button that justcompletely killed an engine.
That's a hell of a prediction.
He just flipped a switch and justan engine just totally shut down.
Yeah.
Okay.
And that is going to cause the plane tosuddenly be dramatically pulling to one
(02:55):
side 'cause it doesn't have any thrust.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Then helping it angled down.
I don't know.
That's my thoughts and if I'mcorrect, I get a Snickers something.
Okay.
March 22nd, 1994.
Zach and I are, webabes, but we are alive.
(03:21):
For 15-year-old Eldar Krinsky,this is a day he's been waiting
for his first trip abroad.
He is excitedly packing his things,making sure that he has all of his
gadgets for the long journey ahead.
I don't know what kindof gadgets you had in 94.
(03:42):
Tamagotchi, packed, hit clips, packed.
Nah, hit clips.
Maven early two thousands.
Um, Walkman Packed.
Was it clips the ones that it waslike 15 seconds of a song you liked.
Yes.
It was like $10.
It was very expensive.
And you got approximately15 seconds of a song.
I loved them.
I had so many, and I would play themwhen I was walking to the school bus
(04:06):
and I'd have to rotate through them sofast because you only get 15 seconds.
Terrible.
That was something that my parentswould've never purchased for me.
Oh, it's so dumb.
It's terrible.
Anyway, he's got his gadgets.
Let's not judge him.
Okay.
He's 15 gadgets.
Eldar isn't just any Russian teenager.
His father, Yaroslav Krinskyis an elite pilot for aero
(04:32):
flop Russia's national Airline.
That is a prestigious position that comeswith very special privileges, including
discounted family travel once a year.
Captain Krinsky is planning totake his children Eldar and his
13-year-old daughter Jana, on afour day vacation to Hong Kong.
(04:54):
Their mother will see them offat the airport, but she actually
isn't coming on the trip.
She gets a vacation that's moreof a vacation vacation than
the kids probably are getting.
Yes, truly.
Another Aero flock Captain, VladimirMov, a friend of the family, is also
taking the same flight to Hong Kong.
(05:15):
He's going to help keep an eyeon the kids during the journey.
To understand the context of this flight,we really need to take a step back
and look at Russia in the early 1990s.
So this is a nation that is in dramatictransition . The Soviet Union had
collapsed only three years earlier, whichis really crazy to think about, right?
(05:40):
Like 1994 and the Soviet Uniononly collapsed three years ago.
It feels like that happeneda thousand years ago, and it
happened when we were born.
It's like nuts.
You're getting old.
Yeah, russia was reallystruggling to establish itself.
In the global economy.
So the country was embracing capitalism,opening its doors to the world.
It was eager to shed this badboy Soviet era image, hence
(06:05):
a state of the art airline.
So it's undergoing majortransformation as well.
It was really known for an aging Sovietfleet, questionable safety practices.
But in light of the new Russian image, italso wanted to kinda shed its ugly skin
(06:26):
and put on something new and exciting.
So as part of this effort,ALOT had purchased five.
Brand new Airbus A 3 10, 300 aircraft fromEuropean manufacturer, Airbus Industries.
The cost of these planes per plane.
(06:46):
Guest sack.
Alright, it is 1994.
How many people can it carry?
Lemme just real quick, look upthe capacity of an Airbus 8 3 10.
220 passengers.
I.
You can fly in an Airbus 8 3 10.
(07:09):
Okay.
That's insane because therewere only 70 something.
Yeah.
However, it can accommodate up to 280.
Okay.
That's insane.
This plane was empty.
Everybody got a row.
You could sit anywhere you wanted.
Literally, everybody got their own row.
Okay.
So knowing that this thing ishuge, megalodon sized, just huge.
(07:29):
So we're talking nineties money.
Mm.
I am gonna guess somewhere around
3 million.
$70 million.
70 million.
70.
Is that in today's money oris that, that's in then money.
Wow.
(07:49):
$70 million.
That's what they paid in 1994,and they bought five of them.
That's a commitment.
Yeah.
You gotta be ready to flag some planes.
Holy crap.
Okay.
These state-of-the-art jets representeda technological leap forward,
unlike the Soviet built planes thatRussian pilots were accustomed to,
(08:12):
the 8 3 10 was a fully computerizedaircraft, sophisticated autopilot
systems, advanced safety features.
Obviously it's 70 mil.
This is like the Rolls Royce of aircraft.
Mm-hmm.
It could fly three times farther thanRussia's largest passenger aircraft.
(08:35):
So it opened up long haulroutes to Asia and beyond.
Airlock created a special divisioncalled Russian International Airlines,
specifically for these new Airbus planes.
Now, what I'm about to describewill sound exactly like the movie
(08:58):
Chop Gun, except instead of fighterjets, it's commercial aircraft.
But for this new, division ofthe airline, they selected the
best pilots to be an elite core.
These are veterans that havethousands of flying hours and
impeccable safety records.
(09:20):
And they were trained directlyfrom Airbus in France.
So they went to like AirbusBootcamp, they went to Top Gun.
Okay.
The best of the best.
Fair enough?
What I'm trying to communicate folks,is that they are not messing around.
Russia is fully investedin this new transformation.
So our captains are obviously partof this elite group of trained
(09:45):
pilots to fly these planes.
So there was an interview that happenedin the documentary that I watched
and they interviewed a colleagueof Krinsky and he said, quote the
airline had around 3000 pilots.
At that time, only 16 wereselected to be trained on the A
(10:05):
three 10 that is top tier of all.
That's incredible.
So 16 out of 3000 madeit to this training.
The transition was not easy.
The Airbus technology was so dramaticallydifferent from the Russian planes that
these pilots had flown for decades.
But pilots like Krinskyand OV worked really hard.
(10:28):
We are so sorry folks.
We are, we are on the road againright now and, uh, can't stop.
Won't stop.
Here we are.
And there's a train passing by our hotel.
Lots of trains.
You're gonna hear them more.
Yes.
We are in La Junta, Colorado.
It's actually our first race weekend.
First race weekend of the season.
Yay.
Followed by many more.
(10:49):
And interestingly enough, theracetrack that we are racing at
today is connected to an airport.
An airport, an airport.
So that's really fun.
We get to like see planestake off while we're racing.
So where was I?
I was talking about how this transitionwas not easy, but for pilots like
(11:09):
Krinsky and ov, they worked reallyhard to master the new systems.
After intensive training, they werecertified and they began flying these
new prestigious international routes.
For Captain Krinsky.
Being selected for this elitegroup was really the pinnacle
of his 20 year flying career.
(11:32):
He had over 9,000 flight hours,including 900 specifically.
On the A three 10, he wasreally considered AFL's, most
experienced and reliable pilot.
So this guy is the maverick.
He is top tier.
He's top tier.
Top gun.
Yep.
Top gun this March flight isscheduled to depart Moscow's
(11:54):
Shava International Airport.
And if that was at all close, I'mgonna give myself a pat on the back.
Heck yeah.
Anyway.
They're going to Hong Kongalong with Kandinsky's children.
There are 63 passengers on board,mostly businessmen from Hong Kong
and Taiwan looking for opportunitiesin the newly opened Russian market,
(12:15):
along with a few Western tourists.
Among them is Adrian Deville aBritish camera shop manager with a
passion for aviation photography.
So this guy is like one of our listeners.
this is an aviation nerd.
I, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm callingthis out because I really felt a
connection to Adrian when they weretalking about him in the documentary,
(12:35):
and it's okay to be a nerd.
He is.
Don't take that personally.
No, I love it.
I love it.
He was traveling to Hong Kong,literally to photograph the new airport.
That was the pinnacle of his trip.
We'll find out if you,if it worked for him.
There's also Mark Newport, who's aBritish sports promoter living in
Hong Kong, who is returning homeafter a business trip to Russia.
(12:58):
Flight five nine three's crewconsisted of six total members.
The flight has both a main and a reliefcrew because it's such a long journey.
First, captain Andrea Delo will commandthe initial leg out of Moscow with Krinsky
as relief Captain First Officer Igor OVwill serve as co-pilot for both captains.
(13:26):
The cabin crew includes threeflight attendants as well.
So it's still not hugefor a plane that size.
If you think about it, it makessense to have relief because
it's such a long flight.
Yeah.
As the gleaming white Airbus with itsdistinctive blue and orange aero livery.
(13:46):
Prepares for departure.
Do you like how I usethe word livery in there?
Yes.
Thank you.
Air Flo Flight 5 9 3 takes off from Moscowat 4:39 PM local time on March 22nd, 1994.
So this is gonna be a red eye.
The sleek Airbus a three 10 climbssmoothly into the late afternoon
(14:07):
sky, beginning its journey eastwardon the trans Siberian airway.
For the first few hours, everythingproceeds exactly as planned.
Captain Donnel love navigates thebusy airspace around Moscow and guides
the plane eastward across Russia.
The autopilot is engagedmaintaining the aircraft at its
(14:28):
cruising altitude of 33,000 feetas the plane passes over siberia.
Roughly the halfway point throughthis journey, captain Dannel.
Takes his scheduled rest breakand he hands the controls
off to Captain Krinsky.
So now Captain Krinsky isthe captain of this plane.
(14:53):
The first officer remains the sameand he'll remain as co-pilot you
have control, says Danal Love.
I have control confirms Krinsky,which is very standard procedure.
When you are transferring command in thecockpit, verbalize it and let everybody
know exactly exactly what's going on.
(15:13):
Yes.
Which we learned the importanceof repeating commands from
our episode on Tenerif.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Okay.
Most of the passengers are now asleep.
We are more than fourhours into this flight.
It's been steady, it's been very calm.
Passengers are sleeping.
(15:35):
The plane is continuing itsjourney through the night sky
over the vast Siberian wilderness.
and The aircraft is cruisingvery smoothly on autopilot.
The Autopilot is essentially asophisticated computer system
that can control the plane'sspeed, altitude, and heading.
It works by sending signals to thevarious control surfaces of the aircraft.
(15:59):
The rudder, which controlssideways movement.
The elevators, which,just like an elevator.
Up and down.
Up and down.
Correct.
And the ailerons whichcontrol banking and rolling.
Hmm.
Okay.
Which you shouldn't be doingin a commercial aircraft.
(16:21):
But don't roll.
Who a commercial jet.
Please don't do that.
Modern autopilots can be partiallyengaged, allowing pilots to control
certain aspects of the flight whilethe computer still handles others.
This flexibility is beneficial, butas we will see, it also can create
confusion if the pilots don't fullyunderstand how the system operates.
(16:45):
Mm-hmm.
On the flight deck with mostpassengers sleeping, captain Krinsky
decides to do something that whiletechnically against regulations,
was really not uncommonfor the early nineties.
He wants to bring his kids to work.
Show him how cool his job is.
(17:05):
Uhhuh, oh my god.
A dad of the year.
Yeah.
My job is not very coolto like watch me do.
If I was a pilot it would be so awesome.
We have a toddler who I'm surewe've talked about many times, but
she loves to be in the shop withZach and see him wrenching on cars.
It's like one of her top threefavorite things of all time.
(17:27):
So I get it.
You wanna show your kid,you're a pilot bad ass.
So before nine 11, cockpit visits weremuch more common around the world.
Many of us who flew at children in the.
Late 1980s and 1990s, actuallyyou didn't fly, but I flew a ton.
Um, they have memories of beinginvited to peek inside the cockpit
(17:51):
or even chat with the pilots.
And this is so true.
I distinctly remembergetting pins from pilots.
I remember one time I wasflying with my mom and they
let me peek inside the cockpit.
Hmm.
Like very cool hands-oninteractions with the pilots.
Nowadays, you almost never see thepilots when you are boarding a flight.
(18:11):
They are like doing their thing.
They are in the cockpit.
And you are interacting strictlywith the flight attendants.
Well, it was definitely wellpast the nineties when I started
flying, but yes, man, I've never,never in my life seen the pilots.
So what happens next in this visit isgonna go way beyond a simple cockpit
(18:34):
peek In a flight attendant escortsELD A and Yana to the flight deck.
Their father proudly shows them around thesophisticated cockpit of the A three 10.
Pointing out the variousdisplays and controls, the
kids are very clearly excited.
Understandably.
It is not their first timein an aircraft cockpit.
(18:57):
They have flown with their fatheron domestic routes before, but
this is their first time in ahigh tech cockpit like the Airbus.
It had computerized systems, whichwas a dramatic contrast to the Soviet
made planes that they were familiarwith . So we know what happens next.
(19:18):
Because of the cockpit voice recorder.
Captain Krinsky asks his daughter,would you like to sit in my seat ? And
Yana hesitantly agrees, and her fatherhelps her into the captain's chair.
Can I turn it?
She asks, referring to the controlcolumn, essentially the steering
wheel of the aircraft, and herdad responds yes a little bit.
(19:43):
So Krinsky is extremely careful.
He knows that the autopilot isengaged and will resist any attempts
to manually control the plane.
What he does next is subtle,but very significant.
He turns a knob on the autopilot.
Panel called the heading SelectKnob, which tells the autopilot to
(20:06):
execute a very gentle left turn asthe plane begins to bank slightly.
It's fun.
Janna feels like she's controllingthe aircraft, but in reality it's
really her dad that just turned aswitch a little bit in the mm-hmm.
In the autopilot kind of maneuvered.
This gentle bank turn autopilot says Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's fun.
It's cute.
It's like a little, a little trick,and Janna totally calls him out on it.
(20:30):
She even says it was youwho turned the plane.
After a few minutes, Krinsky returnsthe aircraft to its original position,
and helps Yana out of the seatbecause it's her brother's turn.
So ELD eagerly takes the captain seat.
Folks, this is a 15-year-old boy withthe chance to sit in a pilot seat and
(20:52):
kids can't help but to touch everything.
I mean, this kid is pumped,like this is the age in America
where you got your permit.
He's so excited.
So he immediately gripsthe control column.
He's got no reservations like a sister.
So Krinsky asks him, if you turn tothe left, where will the plane go?
(21:13):
Left responses, elder correct.
Confirms his father, technicallyhis dad said, right, but
that's a little confusing.
Look out to the left, watchingfor the ground when we're turning.
So Eldar tries to turn it tothe left, the control column.
But unlike his sister'sexperience, no maneuver happens.
(21:34):
And that's because Krinsky hasn'tadjusted the autopilot to create
the illusion of the control.
The column feels stiff and it'sresistant to elders motions because
the autopilot is actually working tomaintain the plane's programmed course.
So the autopilot saying resistant justlike it's supposed to be correct, elder
(21:56):
pushes harder against the resistancebecause he wants to be able to control
the plane because he's 15 years old.
What no one in the cockpit realizes isthat on the A three 10 applying force to
the control column for a certain period.
30 seconds doesn't getignored by the autopilot.
(22:16):
It actually causes the autopilotto partially disconnect.
Hmm.
Surrendering control of the ailerons, thewing surfaces that control the banking.
But it continues to controlthe other aspects of flying.
So now the control of banking isin the hands of a 15-year-old.
(22:40):
Mm-hmm.
This design feature was intended togive pilots an emergency override.
But it comes with a critical drawback.
There's no audible warning whenthis partial disconnect happens.
Hmm.
Only a small visual indicator that's veryeasy to miss in a distracting cockpit.
(23:01):
Hmm.
No distractions.
And yeah, they've got allthe distractions there.
Two kids.
It's very fun.
It's bustling.
Mm-hmm.
Do, do, do, do our captainsmiss the indicator light.
Neither krinsky nor the first officernotice that by applying steady
pressure to the controls eldar hasjust inadvertently disconnected.
(23:24):
A crucial part of the autopilot systemnow without anyone realizing it.
15-year-old ldar.
Is controlling the bank angleof a passenger jet carrying
75 people over Siberia.
What happens next is going to unfoldin only four minutes and 30 seconds.
(23:44):
Wow.
Yeah.
From a cruising altitude of 32,000 feet.
Yes.
With the autopilot partially disconnectedand no one aware of it, aero flight 5
9 3 begins a gentle roll to the right.
At first, it's barely perceptible.
Elder is actually the firstto notice something unusual.
(24:05):
Why is it turning?
He asks, is it turning by itself?
Yes, it is.
His father responds, puzzled, exceptthey think the autopilot's still
on, so it's supposed to do that.
The plane is now banking at anincreasing angle, but confusion
(24:27):
reigns on the flight deck.
Captain Krinsky and First OfficerPI are baffled because as far as
they know, the autopilot shouldbe maintaining their course.
Captain ov, who is alsoin the cockpit visiting.
Offers an explanation.
We've gone into a zone, a holding pattern.
(24:49):
Now we know about holding patterns.
Mm-hmm.
Right from some of our other episodes.
What he means is that he thinks theplane has entered a programmed holding
pattern, which is a circular route.
Aircraft sometimes fly while theyare waiting to land at busy airports.
This is what happened in ourHelios episode where the plane was
just circling above until, um.
(25:11):
Till it ran outta gas,till it ran outta gas.
Spoiler alert on that one.
This seems to make sense when theynotice an arc appearing on their
navigation display that resembledthe pattern of a holding zone, but
they're flying over remote Siberia.
They are thousands of miles away from anyairport where they might need to hold.
(25:34):
The arc that they're seeing isactually the plane's own turning
path being traced on the display.
This misinterpretation costs themprecious seconds of reaction time
as the bank angle increases, thesituation rapidly deteriorates.
When a plane banks deeply,it can't maintain altitude
(25:57):
without increasing power.
So think of a car trying to climb a hill.
The autopilot is still controllingthe pitch in power and it attempts
to compensate by raising the noseand increasing thrust, but these
adjustments aren't enough tocounter the increasingly steep bank.
(26:21):
Yeah.
I would say that's fairly clear.
Okay.
The car you're drivinga manual car, correct?
Uphill?
Yeah.
With cruise control on, yeah.
So it is trying to maintain thespeed, but it can't drop a gear on its
own because it's a manual gear box.
Mm-hmm.
So our PMs are just dropping, dropping,dropping, and it can't possibly
do enough to continue that speed.
That's exactly it.
(26:42):
By the time the bank angle reaches45 degrees, which is way steeper,
that's a sharp turn than commercialaircraft normally operate.
Warning signs begin to appear.
Parts of the flight control displaygo dark indicating that the plane is
beyond its normal operating parameters.
What's wrong?
(27:03):
Someone asks nothing.
PIs responds.
Still not grasping theseverity of this situation.
Mm.
It bothers me that he doesn'tsense that something is wrong.
I mean, yeah.
And I don't think it's tough becauseall we have right, are voice recordings.
Yeah.
So we don't actually know what'sgoing through his head if he's trying
(27:24):
to remain calm because there arechildren in the cockpit, which, you
know, you would try to stay calm.
Absolutely.
Like if I.
Knew that something really bad washappening, but there were kids around me.
I would certainly do mybest to remain composed.
Yeah.
I knew if we were about to be ina big crash, I wouldn't tell Aria.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(27:44):
The confusion in the cockpit iscompounded by the fact that the pilots
have primarily flown Russian builtaircraft, which would've sounded
an alarm for such a situation.
The Airbus has a different philosophy.
It uses visual.
Rather than audible warnings forcertain conditions, a distinction
(28:04):
that these pilots really weren'tadequately trained to recognize by
now, the situation has become critical.
The aircraft is bankingat nearly 90 degrees.
Whoa.
Yeah.
90 degrees.
Folks.
Think about your basic geometry here, andnobody can feel that oh, they feel okay.
(28:27):
There's no way you don't feel, everybodyfeels that the passengers at this
point, I'm sure are awake, freakingout, and freaking the fuck out.
And the ones that didn't wake upfast enough have fallen out of
their seats and into another seat.
Yes.
So it's now at nearly 90 degrees,and it is rapidly losing altitude.
(28:49):
The extreme angle creates disorientationand very powerful G-Force that
push everybody against theirseats making movement difficult.
Get out, get out.
Captain Krinsky shouts to Eldar,but the teenager can barely move due
to the forces pressing on his body.
His father strugglesto reach the controls.
(29:11):
As the plane continues, itsdeadly roll throughout the cabin.
Sleeping passengers are jolted awake.
As the plane enters its steepbank, unsecured items are flying.
Mm-hmm.
Around as the altitudebecomes increasingly abnormal.
As the plane continues rolling,it enters a steep dive.
(29:35):
This is so scary.
So it's, is that becauseof lack of velocity?
So the nose can't stay up as much?
Yeah.
It automatically dips down.
Mm-hmm.
So now the plane is getting close tobeing upside down at this point, and
it is also now in a very steep dive.
An automated stall warning beginsto sound a critical alert indicating
(29:58):
that the aircraft is losing lift.
The plane safety systems kick in,pushing the nose down to regain
air speed to avoid a stall.
Which only accelerates thedive that they are already in.
The aircraft is now plummetingat 40,000 feet per minute, about
(30:19):
450 miles per hour straight down.
And if everybody recalls, when westarted our journey, we were only at 32.
33,000.
Yeah.
33,000 feet.
Which means they are going to hitthe ground in less than one minute.
Mm-hmm.
First Officer
PIs pulls back hard on his controlcolumn, trying desperately to
(30:44):
bring the nose up initially.
His efforts actually do seem to work.
The plane begins to pull out of the dive.
But in the stress of the moment, he overcorrects, pulling the nose up too sharply.
The aircraft having gained tremendousspeed in its dive now climbs rapidly,
but quickly loses forward momentum.
(31:05):
So this is like a cartrying to climb a wall.
It simply does not have enough power.
It's not going to be able to do it.
The airspeed drops dangerouslyand the plane does stall.
The wings no longer generateenough lift to keep it flying.
(31:27):
The stall causes the airbus toenter a spin, which, oh my God.
I mean, obviously being in an aviationaccident incident disaster is.
Terrifying.
And it is a massive fear that Ihave, but the idea of being in a
commercial aircraft that is spinningseems just so wrong in every single
(31:51):
way, just like brutal discomfort.
When we talk about a spin, arewe talking about a 360 or are we
talking about like a barrel roll?
A corkscrew.
Okay.
Yeah, a corkscrew.
So this is one of, if not the mostdangerous condition that an aircraft.
Can experience.
the corkscrew towards the groundis almost always catastrophic when
(32:15):
impossible will come outta Yeah.
When it is a commercial aircraft.
By this point, captain Krinsky has managedto get back into his seat working together
he and our first officerfight the controls.
They are trying desperately torecover from the spin as pilots,
they know the right proceduresfor a situation like this, lower
(32:39):
the nose to gain air speed level.
The wings pull up gently so thatyou do not against overdo it.
Yes, you don't wanna overdo it, butexecuting these maneuvers in such extreme
conditions is enormously difficult.
Mm-hmm.
I've got it.
I've got it.
I've got full throttle.
Krinsky calls out applyingmaximum power to the engines.
(33:02):
He pumps the rudder pedals trying to usethe vertical tail to break the spin Slowly
their efforts do begin to show results.
The corkscrew motion starts to diminish.
The plane actually begins to level out.
For brief moment.
It seems that they mayhave recovered control.
(33:24):
Mm.
The aircraft responds to their inputs.
However, they've lost toomuch altitude too quickly.
So remember, they hadessentially 40 seconds.
Yeah.
Basically to figure this out, whichmeans any, even close to that time
means you are close to the ground.
(33:44):
Correct.
So, in the chaos of the fourand a half minutes, basically
that things went terribly wrong.
They dropped from 33,000 feetto only a few thousand feet.
And they are in rugged Siberian terrainwhere they have big mountains Yes.
(34:05):
And cliffs and, yes.
At 11:59 PM Moscow time, justover four minutes after LDAR
first moved to the controls.
Aero flight 5 9 3 slams intoa hillside in Siberia, and it
explodes immediately on impact.
Wow.
All 75 people on boardare killed instantly.
(34:28):
Yeah.
The aircraft's last moments arerecorded by the flight data recorder.
The final words captured on the cockpitvoice recorder are the frantic efforts of
the pilots trying to save their aircraft.
Their passengers, their children.
Children in the Air Traffic ControlCenter, controllers wait for flight 5 9 3
to report passing their airspace boundary.
(34:51):
But the call never comes Withinhours, search parties are dispatched
to the remote wooded hillsidewhere the radar contact was lost.
What they find is a scene of completedevastation, a testament to the
unforgiving consequences of evenmomentary lapses in aviation safety.
(35:11):
Let's talk about the investigationand what went terribly wrong.
As dawn breaks over the Siberianwilderness on March 23rd, 1994, search and
rescue teams converge on the crash scene.
It's desolate.
Desolate scene debris is scatteredacross a wooded hillside . The
(35:33):
scattered wreckage of what was oncea state-of-the-art, Airbus A three
10 now lies frozen in the snow.
It's immediately clear to thefirst responders that this
is a recovery, not a rescue.
The violence of the impacthas left no survivors at all.
News of the crash sends shockwaves through ALO and through
(35:55):
the Russian aviation community.
How could one of the newest, most,most advanced, advanced aircraft
piloted by By the best pilot, thebest of the best, fall out of the sky?
Because that is what itlooked like happened.
(36:15):
Yeah, it happened so fast.
It just that it lookslike it just dropped.
Dropped out of the sky initially.
Speculation in the Russian media suggestsa terrorist attack after all russia in
the early 1990s was experiencing verysignificant political instability.
(36:36):
They were hated for sure.
Yes, for sure.
But investigators are notjumping to conclusions.
Their focus is on recovering crucialevidence, including the black box
outstanding, the flight data recorderand the cockpit voice recorder.
Yes.
These devices, which are,what color are they, Zach?
(36:58):
Were they blue?
They're bright.
Orange.
Orange.
That's what they are.
Bright orange, which makes themeasier to find in wreckage.
Yeah, there is a method to the madness.
Um, they are designed towithstand extreme conditions.
The flight data recorder logshundreds of parameters about
the aircraft's performance.
While the cockpit voice recorder capturesall sounds and conversations on the
(37:23):
flight deck, the Russian governmentassigns Chief accident investigator.
Ivan Ky.
I'm gonna call him Ky, orI'll just call him Ivan.
Chief Accident Investigator Ivan.
He is going to lead the inquiryinitial examination of the crash
site offers puzzling clues,unbroken bottles of champagne.
(37:49):
A flight attendant found wearingan oxygen mask and most strangely.
The body of at least one childthrown into the cockpit area.
The recovered flight data recorderindicates that the engines were running
normally when the aircraft hit the ground,ruling out engine failure as a cause.
(38:11):
But ien needs expert help to fullyunderstand what happened to the
sophisticated Western build aircraft.
He turns to Vladimir Bov, anexperienced test pilot, and crash
investigator at Moscow's Grov Institute.
So Vladimir is particularly wellqualified for this investigation
(38:33):
because he had been directly involvedin testing and certifying the A three
10 before the Russians purchased itbecause of the fate of this plane.
The fate of this airline.
My first reaction was shock.
That is what he said.
That's a quote.
I remember spending a sleeplessnight distraught and trying to
(38:54):
figure out what might have happened.
So he's invested.
Let's see what he figures out.
The investigation begins in earnestwith a complete analysis of the cockpit
voice recorder and what it revealsobviously stuns the investigators.
They hear Captain Krinsky invitinghis children into the cockpit and
(39:16):
allowing them to sit in his seat tohandle the controls of the aircraft.
Frowned upon it's, yeah, it's a choice.
Can I turn this?
They hear eldar ask.
Yes, but if you turn it to theleft, where will the plane go?
His father responds the To the left?
Yeah.
The recording continues capturing thegrowing confusion as the plane begins.
(39:39):
It's un uncom commanded turn, andobviously the subsequent loss of control,
the desperate struggle of the pilots torecover the aircraft in its final moments.
For investigators.
This revelation is shocking.
Not only were there unauthorizedpersons in the cockpit, but a child
(40:00):
had been allowed to sit in the controlsof a passenger aircraft in flight.
This is a serious violation of safetyprotocols, but the children's presence
alone does not equal airplane crash.
No.
Right?
It is weird that the kids are in thecockpit, but that is not the direct cause
(40:21):
of this plane going down, and they needto figure out what on earth happens.
The breakthrough comes whenour investigator discovers that
approximately two and a half minutes.
Before the crash, while LDARwas at the controls, the
autopilot partially disconnected.
This is really that aha moment.
(40:42):
To confirm his theory, hetravels to Airbus headquarters
in France to reconstruct theincident on a flight simulator.
Using information from the flight datarecorder, he meticulously recreates
LD A R'S actions at the controls.
What he discovers is really alarming.
(41:04):
When LDAR applied sustained pressureto the control column, it caused the
autopilot to disconnect from the partof the autopilot that controls banking.
The control surfaces that managethe aircraft's banking and rolling
motions were disconnected, andit happened without any warning.
To the pilots.
(41:25):
So what they figured out is obviously ifyou hold it long enough, it turns off.
It turns off, which is reallycritical information, for pilots to
have, and they did not know that.
Yeah, I would think that if the pilotknew it could just shut itself off.
He probably wouldn't have let his childrensit in there pushing against it for
(41:48):
so long, or sit in there at all 100%.
The Russian pilots trainedprimarily on Soviet aircraft, were
unaware of this characteristic.
Their Russian planes, likewe said before, had alarms.
When things like this would havehappened and nothing beeped at
them and said, this is not good.
(42:09):
No, no.
It only had that small visualindicator that went undetected.
So the investigation also reveals whythe crew misinterpreted the situation.
Once the plane began turning, when theysaw the arc appearing on the navigation
display, they thought that they hadsomehow entered the holding pattern.
(42:30):
So this misunderstanding, thinking thatthe computer was just executing a program
maneuver rather than the controls of a15-year-old caused them to not panic.
They should have beenpanicking immediately.
Immediate panic.
Once the bank angle became too steep,the aircraft did lose altitude.
(42:53):
It began the dive, itstalled, = they tried to save it.
It entered the corkscrew and ultimatelyended up crashing into a hillside.
The investigation concludes that whilethe immediate cause of the accident was
LD a's inadvertent disengagement of partof the autopilot, there were many other
factors that contributed to the disaster.
(43:14):
First, the fact that hewas in the captain's seat.
Yeah, he was piloting a plane autopilot.
On or not, he should nothave been in that seat
Second is the pilot's unfamiliaritywith the specific characteristics of
this plane and how even though there'sno audible warning, there is a visual
(43:35):
warning, and they were not aware of that.
Third was their misinterpretationof the situation.
Which caused them to not react properly.
Had they reacted and corrected it,this plane would not have crashed.
And finally, their difficulty in executingthe proper recovery techniques once
the aircraft entered extreme altitudesbeyond the normal flight envelope.
(43:59):
So as investigators would laterobserve, it was not the crew's
fault, but really their misfortune.
If a person doesn't know how to dosomething because he was never taught
to you, can't really blame him.
And I really thought thatquote was pretty powerful.
I like all these companies thatkind of say stuff like that and
(44:23):
have their people's back evenafter something tragic happens.
I mean, this is theinvestigator, so that's.
Really good because that's not evena, yeah, that's not even like a press
release from, but genuinely the trainingfrom air flop just seems so poor.
Like to not understand what the warningsystem is is just a huge oversight.
I know, I know.
It's pretty wild because they literallywent to a bootcamp, but it feels like that
(44:46):
bootcamp didn't quite do the bootcamp.
Taught them the things that theyknow like you're gonna fly the plane.
Yeah.
Obviously.
Yeah.
It feels like it did notcover the critical Yeah.
Information.
So the crash of airlock flight 5 93sent ripples through the aviation
world, particularly in Russia wherethis plane and this, these pilots
(45:12):
are really supposed to be thislike fresh face of new aviation.
Mm-hmm.
And I mean, this is a hell of a wayto kick off their new PR campaign.
Yeah.
It's not good.
And obviously, and far more tragically,the families of the 75 victims, the
revelation that the crash had been causedby such a preventable series of events,
(45:38):
beginning with the captain, allowinghis children to handle the controls.
Many of them felt angeralongside grief because this
was such a preventable incident.
So Brenda Clark, who is the mother ofMark New Newport, who was the guy who
was gonna go take the pictures mm-hmm.
(46:01):
Of the traveling justto see the new airport.
Yeah.
At the Hong Kong airport.
She said, what I objected to wasthe way we were treated by alo.
After the accident, theywouldn't tell us anything.
They denied everything.
I wanted to know why my son died.
I wanted to know why these men hadbeen allowed to do such a thing.
(46:23):
In the days following the crash,airlock flew families of the deceased
to Moscow, then to the crash sitein Siberia for memorial services.
Chinese relatives performed traditionalrituals, dropping messages written
on paper into the forested areawhere their loved ones had died.
And Western families laid flowers.
(46:43):
The authorities also took familiesto a morgue in a town near the
crash site where recovered bodieswere being held to identify.
Many were too damaged.
To be identified and the familieswere asked to look at recovered items
of clothing and personal effects tohelp with the identification process.
(47:08):
That's just brutal.
The aero flaw, the crash was a majorsetback to this new transformed image
that they were trying to uh, put out.
Higher management initially triedto downplay the circumstances
surrounding the accident, aware of howembarrassing the revelations would be.
(47:30):
As Boris Riach, an aerospace consultantin Moscow would say air flop managers
and executives tried to conceal resultsand downplay the importance of this
accident because it was very embarrassing.
End quote.
Well, yeah, guy, that's sometimesthat's really how the cookie crumbles.
(47:53):
The crash also raised serious questionsfor Airbus because, while there shouldn't
have been children in the cockpit, therealso probably shouldn't be a random
disengagement feature of your autopilotthat doesn't have a really good signal.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's also the same way for cars incruise control, like tapping the brake
(48:17):
pedal disengages the cruise, becauseif you need to slow down, you see
something before a car can see something.
That's even with the brand newstuff that has the radar for
all the other cars in traffic.
That's fair.
Well, let's talk aboutsome changes that happened.
In the aftermath of the accident,several significant changes were
(48:39):
implemented in aviation practices.
First cockpit access became muchmore restricted, so while the
complete lockdown of cockpits wouldcome later, following nine 11, the
accident accelerated the trend towardslimiting cockpit visits, especially
(48:59):
during critical phases of flight.
It, it tracks.
Yeah.
If you're gonna have people in the cockpitdo it before the plane is in the air.
A a second.
Airbus did review the autopilot systemand the warning indicators, while the
basic functionality remained allowingpilots to override the autopilot by
applying sustained pressure, latermodels would incorporate clearer
(49:24):
warnings such as, audible sounds
yeah, I mean, just getsomething that announces Yeah.
Autopilot off.
So they did make someimprovements to that.
Third airlines around the worldwould strengthen their pilot training
programs, particularly for crewstransitioning to aircraft with
different control philosophies.
(49:46):
So I mean, this is a huge issue.
These pilots, even though they werequote unquote trained and they were the
best of the best and whatever, if theydon't know that a feature of an airplane
exists, they can, they can't use that.
Correct.
Yeah.
Correct.
So that was addressed.
The concept of upset recoverytraining, teaching pilots how to
(50:07):
handle extreme flight altitudes andconditions really gained new importance.
That's fair.
Yeah.
The crash of flight 5 9 3 came duringa troubling \ period of aviation
safety in 1994, the same year as thisaccident, a series of crashes in the
United States raised questions abouthow commercial pilots handle upset
(50:31):
situations, conditions where aircraftfind themselves in extreme altitudes.
Beyond normal flight parameters.
So there were a bunch of crashes thathappened in the United States, and we
will actually end up covering, most ofthose, if not all of them at some point.
We, I mean, depend on stories.
We gotta cover 'em all.
Oh, we will not run outta stories.
That's one thing where it's likea, you know, like a murder podcast.
(50:53):
You don't run outta murders.
And believe it or not, we will notrun out of plane crashes or incidents.
I would say that there's probablymore murders in the world
than there are plane crashes.
Yes.
But as you keep reminding me, wedon't just do plane crashes, we do
trains, we do cars, we do planes,trains, paragliding, automobiles.
We do yachts, yacht, yacht.
(51:17):
Within a year the industry had begunoffering a specialized upset recovery
training, teaching pilot skills tohandle extreme situations like the
one that developed on flight 5 9 3.
While this training was initiated inresponse to several incidents, the
lessons from the Airlock crash wereincorporated into these programs.
The victims of Flight 5 9 3 are buriedin various locations based on their
(51:42):
nationalities and their families wishes.
Those who couldn't be identified,22 bodies in total were cremated
together by the Russian authorities.
22 people, just like peopleknow that they never identified
their people, so they're gone.
(52:03):
Yeah, but they just knowthey're somewhere in this 22.
It's horrible.
The crew of the Airbus Captain KrinskyFirst, officer Pisco and first Captain
Dan ov are buried in a cemetery inMoscow, in a section reserved for heroes
alongside the firefighters who died atthe Chernobyl nuclear plant Elder and
(52:27):
Yana Krinsky lying next to their father.
Looking back at this tragedy,aviation experts see it as a powerful
example of how multiple factorscan align to create disaster.
Zach, what is that theory called?
The Swiss cheese theory.
Swiss Cheese theory.
It's the Swiss cheese theory when abunch of random things all line up.
(52:50):
Like if you stack multiple slices ofSwiss cheese and then there happens
to be one where it goes all the waythrough, like there's one hole hole
all the through like 18 pieces.
Yes, correct.
That is the Swiss cheese theory andthat is exactly what happened here.
The legacy of Flight 5 9 3 lives on inthe procedures and trainings that help
(53:11):
keep flying safe today, the absoluteprohibition against unauthorized personnel
handling the aircraft controls has reallybecome one of aviation's golden rules.
Mm-hmm.
If it ain't yours, don't touch it.
You don't touch it, you don't touch it.
No matter how routine a flight may seem,how experienced a crew might be, the rules
(53:35):
exist because the consequences of breakingthem even briefly can be catastrophic.
I am such a rule follower.
Yes, you're, it's why I do roadracing because I like rigid black and
white, told how she's to do things.
Yes.
I like that.
(53:55):
I don't, yeah, I know.
And that's why you're a drifter.
All right, Zach, thatis our story for today.
What do you think I told you?
It was a crazy one.
It is a crazy one.
As we always talk about, there's a,you know, good that comes out of all of
these because it keeps travel safer now.
Being a dad, I feel terrible for.
(54:17):
One, the mom being the onlyone left in the family.
but also I can't imagine the dad'sthoughts about his family when he
knows that this plane is going down.
I guess he didn't necessarilyknow it was going down.
They thought they saved it and thenthey hit the side of the hill basically.
I dunno, there's a lot to unpack there.
I thought this one would hit a littleextra hard because you're dad and
(54:40):
this is really also a daddy and thisis really, you know, a story about
a dad who was just trying to dosomething really cool with his kids.
Something that, somethingthat no kids get to do ever.
Yeah.
And it just ended so badly.
I am curious.
Yeah, no, please go.
Let's talk about if, you know,um, what was the media like
(55:04):
surrounding that captain?
Obviously people were upset, were mad,and there people saying, Hey, they
shouldn't have ever had kids in there.
but I'm curious, was there alot of like hatred towards that?
Mother Was the airline sued like crazy?
It's interesting.
Rattles off of my brain for sure.
And there were lawsuits Yeah.
(55:26):
And settlements involved in this.
So the relatives of the victims,including those from Hong Kong,
they did initiate a lawsuit againstALO and they wanted compensation
for the death of their loved ones.
Understandably.
Yeah.
So at least 25 families wererepresented in legal actions.
The lawsuits time to meet the two yearstatute of limitations for such claims.
(55:50):
Sue, get your money.
The family sought compensationabove the Warsaw Convention cap,
which was at the time $20,000.
So they argued that the circumstances,specifically the fact that a
child basically crashed this planewere warranted, hire damages.
(56:12):
One noticeable case is Lamb versus Alo, inwhich the plaintiff who lost her husband
in the crash sought over $10 million.
Wow.
Which is obviously a lotmore than the cap of.
$20,000.
Maybe I'll do a deep dive at somepoint on the cap and why that exists.
(56:34):
I don't know if that is like toprotect airlines from No, probably
from having to pay out too much money.
Exactly.
You picture if it was $10million per person Yeah.
And you're paying out too 78 familiesif it, every person was unrelated.
But yeah, I mean thatwould absolutely be you.
That's a, that's a quarter full planeand Yeah, that's a lot, lot of dollars.
(56:56):
So it could, it can absolutely bankrupt.
A a a billion dollar higher Yes.
An entire airline.
Especially one that'sa little bit smaller.
So, airlock reportedly attempted tolimit legal action by making cash
offers to the families of the victims,particularly those from Hong Kong.
(57:16):
These offers were really seenas an effort to settle out of
court and avoid any litigation.
Yeah.
The law firm that represented a bunchof the flight victims filed a suit
in France where Airbus, the aircraftmanufacturer was headquartered.
The families that they representedultimately obtained substantial
(57:39):
economic recoveries throughsettlements, although the specific
terms and amounts are not provided.
Yeah.
I suppose that would've been anotherone of the questions, like we know
that it was the pilot and his children.
Mm-hmm.
Like that is the main source of this, but.
It really bothers me the lack of training.
Like they were taught how to fly a plane.
They already know how to flya plane, teach them all the
(58:02):
logistical stuff about this plane.
I'll just give like a quick overviewof, I don't know if this is all of
them, but this is the ones at leastthat were listed in my research.
So there is the woman who lost her husbandand she specifically went after aero
flock in the US was the jurisdictionand she sought $10 million in damages
(58:22):
a little bit over that technically.
Then there was a lawsuitby the Hong Kong families.
This was in uK or Hong Kong court,there was conflicting information there.
And this was settled, but therewas not a confirmation of how
much that was for was Correct?
Correct.
(58:42):
There was another class actionlawsuit with multiple victims.
So this was that like big group one, andthey went after both ALOT and Airbus.
Mm.
And this was in France.
This was settled.
I'm glad Airbus had to pay out somethingbecause yeah, I do feel not a large, but
(59:05):
still feels large portion of that blameis on them because the pilots didn't know
that they should be looking for something.
How do you just not know that?
I don't know.
And that information was provided bythe Wikipedia page, just so people know.
Wikipedia.
Fun fact, did I just do Wikipedia?
Fun fact.
Mm-hmm.
Did I say that?
Yeah.
I need to give full creditto where that is from.
(59:27):
That's from Love Murder.
Hmm.
They will do at the end of theirepisodes a Wikipedia fun fact.
And I listen to that podcast somuch that when I say Wikipedia,
I automatically do that.
Shout out to Love Murder.
If you are into Murder.
I literally can't recommendtheir podcast more.
It's unbelievably well researchedand they're just so fun to listen to.
(59:47):
So anyway, if you enjoyed this episode,please rate, review and subscribe.
And if you do write a review.
We will send you a sticker.
Just go ahead and message us onFacebook or Instagram or email us at
final boarding call podcast@gmail.com.
(01:00:08):
It rolls right off the tongue.
make sure that you join us next timewhen we will be exploring another
transportation disaster story.
Until then, remember to stow yourtray tables, fasten your seat belts,
and prepare for the unexpectedbecause not every trip reaches.
(01:00:30):
It's final destination.
Goodbye.
Peace.
Picture this, a brand newAirbus, a three 10 cruising over
the vast Siberian wilderness.
In the cockpit.
A seasoned pilot proudly shows histeenage children the sophisticated
controls of the aircraft.
In moments what begins as a father'sinnocent display of professional
(00:22):
pride will spiral into a nightmare.
The plane begins to bankmysteriously warning lights, flash.
Confusion turns to panic asthe pilots realize they've
lost control of the aircraft.
We're about to experience.
What happens when the fundamentalrules of aviation safety are broken
(00:45):
with catastrophic consequences.
So stow your tray tables, fastenyour seat belts, and prepare for
some extreme turbulence becausethis is final boarding call.
Hello and welcome to Final Boarding Call.
(01:07):
I am your disaster obsessed host,Alice, and I am the not quite,
so obsessed, homebody husband,slightly less obsessed, Zach.
All right, before we dive in, aquick reminder to our listeners.
Please rate, review, and subscribewherever you get your podcasts.
(01:30):
We'll make stickers and if youwrite a review in, we will send
you a final boarding call sticker.
I think that'd be really cool.
So Absolutely.
Heck yeah.
Brier.
I really didn't know what to expectwith starting all this stuff.
Um, yeah.
'cause it's a pain in the ass.
No, I'm, I just mean with listeners.
I wasn't sure if it was just gonnabe something that we were recording
(01:50):
and was technically out there,but I wasn't sure it was actually
gonna really get listened to.
That's fair.
People love disaster.
I suppose you can't take your eyesoff a train crash plane crash.
Sure.
Okay.
All right.
Here we go.
This episode is, based on anair crash investigation episode.
(02:10):
This is season three, episode10, titled Kid in the Cockpit.
It is an excellent one.
They did a great job covering it.
I'm gonna put out a little bit ofa feeler, a little bit of a guess.
All right.
Now we know the basicpremise from the intro.
Mm-hmm.
I am going to guess that this15-year-old son in there was
(02:33):
looking at the buttons, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Obviously has no idea what'sgoing on and accidentally.
Hit a button that justcompletely killed an engine.
That's a hell of a prediction.
He just flipped a switch and justan engine just totally shut down.
Yeah.
Okay.
And that is going to cause the plane tosuddenly be dramatically pulling to one
(02:55):
side 'cause it doesn't have any thrust.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Then helping it angled down.
I don't know.
That's my thoughts and if I'mcorrect, I get a Snickers something.
Okay.
March 22nd, 1994.
Zach and I are, webabes, but we are alive.
(03:21):
For 15-year-old Eldar Krinsky,this is a day he's been waiting
for his first trip abroad.
He is excitedly packing his things,making sure that he has all of his
gadgets for the long journey ahead.
I don't know what kindof gadgets you had in 94.
(03:42):
Tamagotchi, packed, hit clips, packed.
Nah, hit clips.
Maven early two thousands.
Um, Walkman Packed.
Was it clips the ones that it waslike 15 seconds of a song you liked.
Yes.
It was like $10.
It was very expensive.
And you got approximately15 seconds of a song.
I loved them.
I had so many, and I would play themwhen I was walking to the school bus
(04:06):
and I'd have to rotate through them sofast because you only get 15 seconds.
Terrible.
That was something that my parentswould've never purchased for me.
Oh, it's so dumb.
It's terrible.
Anyway, he's got his gadgets.
Let's not judge him.
Okay.
He's 15 gadgets.
Eldar isn't just any Russian teenager.
His father, Yaroslav Krinskyis an elite pilot for aero
(04:32):
flop Russia's national Airline.
That is a prestigious position that comeswith very special privileges, including
discounted family travel once a year.
Captain Krinsky is planning totake his children Eldar and his
13-year-old daughter Jana, on afour day vacation to Hong Kong.
(04:54):
Their mother will see them offat the airport, but she actually
isn't coming on the trip.
She gets a vacation that's moreof a vacation vacation than
the kids probably are getting.
Yes, truly.
Another Aero flock Captain, VladimirMov, a friend of the family, is also
taking the same flight to Hong Kong.
(05:15):
He's going to help keep an eyeon the kids during the journey.
To understand the context of this flight,we really need to take a step back
and look at Russia in the early 1990s.
So this is a nation that is in dramatictransition . The Soviet Union had
collapsed only three years earlier, whichis really crazy to think about, right?
(05:40):
Like 1994 and the Soviet Uniononly collapsed three years ago.
It feels like that happeneda thousand years ago, and it
happened when we were born.
It's like nuts.
You're getting old.
Yeah, russia was reallystruggling to establish itself.
In the global economy.
So the country was embracing capitalism,opening its doors to the world.
It was eager to shed this badboy Soviet era image, hence
(06:05):
a state of the art airline.
So it's undergoing majortransformation as well.
It was really known for an aging Sovietfleet, questionable safety practices.
But in light of the new Russian image, italso wanted to kinda shed its ugly skin
(06:26):
and put on something new and exciting.
So as part of this effort,ALOT had purchased five.
Brand new Airbus A 3 10, 300 aircraft fromEuropean manufacturer, Airbus Industries.
The cost of these planes per plane.
(06:46):
Guest sack.
Alright, it is 1994.
How many people can it carry?
Lemme just real quick, look upthe capacity of an Airbus 8 3 10.
220 passengers.
I.
You can fly in an Airbus 8 3 10.
(07:09):
Okay.
That's insane because therewere only 70 something.
Yeah.
However, it can accommodate up to 280.
Okay.
That's insane.
This plane was empty.
Everybody got a row.
You could sit anywhere you wanted.
Literally, everybody got their own row.
Okay.
So knowing that this thing ishuge, megalodon sized, just huge.
(07:29):
So we're talking nineties money.
Mm.
I am gonna guess somewhere around
3 million.
$70 million.
70 million.
70.
Is that in today's money oris that, that's in then money.
Wow.
(07:49):
$70 million.
That's what they paid in 1994,and they bought five of them.
That's a commitment.
Yeah.
You gotta be ready to flag some planes.
Holy crap.
Okay.
These state-of-the-art jets representeda technological leap forward,
unlike the Soviet built planes thatRussian pilots were accustomed to,
(08:12):
the 8 3 10 was a fully computerizedaircraft, sophisticated autopilot
systems, advanced safety features.
Obviously it's 70 mil.
This is like the Rolls Royce of aircraft.
Mm-hmm.
It could fly three times farther thanRussia's largest passenger aircraft.
(08:35):
So it opened up long haulroutes to Asia and beyond.
Airlock created a special divisioncalled Russian International Airlines,
specifically for these new Airbus planes.
Now, what I'm about to describewill sound exactly like the movie
(08:58):
Chop Gun, except instead of fighterjets, it's commercial aircraft.
But for this new, division ofthe airline, they selected the
best pilots to be an elite core.
These are veterans that havethousands of flying hours and
impeccable safety records.
(09:20):
And they were trained directlyfrom Airbus in France.
So they went to like AirbusBootcamp, they went to Top Gun.
Okay.
The best of the best.
Fair enough?
What I'm trying to communicate folks,is that they are not messing around.
Russia is fully investedin this new transformation.
So our captains are obviously partof this elite group of trained
(09:45):
pilots to fly these planes.
So there was an interview that happenedin the documentary that I watched
and they interviewed a colleagueof Krinsky and he said, quote the
airline had around 3000 pilots.
At that time, only 16 wereselected to be trained on the A
(10:05):
three 10 that is top tier of all.
That's incredible.
So 16 out of 3000 madeit to this training.
The transition was not easy.
The Airbus technology was so dramaticallydifferent from the Russian planes that
these pilots had flown for decades.
But pilots like Krinskyand OV worked really hard.
(10:28):
We are so sorry folks.
We are, we are on the road againright now and, uh, can't stop.
Won't stop.
Here we are.
And there's a train passing by our hotel.
Lots of trains.
You're gonna hear them more.
Yes.
We are in La Junta, Colorado.
It's actually our first race weekend.
First race weekend of the season.
Yay.
Followed by many more.
(10:49):
And interestingly enough, theracetrack that we are racing at
today is connected to an airport.
An airport, an airport.
So that's really fun.
We get to like see planestake off while we're racing.
So where was I?
I was talking about how this transitionwas not easy, but for pilots like
(11:09):
Krinsky and ov, they worked reallyhard to master the new systems.
After intensive training, they werecertified and they began flying these
new prestigious international routes.
For Captain Krinsky.
Being selected for this elitegroup was really the pinnacle
of his 20 year flying career.
(11:32):
He had over 9,000 flight hours,including 900 specifically.
On the A three 10, he wasreally considered AFL's, most
experienced and reliable pilot.
So this guy is the maverick.
He is top tier.
He's top tier.
Top gun.
Yep.
Top gun this March flight isscheduled to depart Moscow's
(11:54):
Shava International Airport.
And if that was at all close, I'mgonna give myself a pat on the back.
Heck yeah.
Anyway.
They're going to Hong Kongalong with Kandinsky's children.
There are 63 passengers on board,mostly businessmen from Hong Kong
and Taiwan looking for opportunitiesin the newly opened Russian market,
(12:15):
along with a few Western tourists.
Among them is Adrian Deville aBritish camera shop manager with a
passion for aviation photography.
So this guy is like one of our listeners.
this is an aviation nerd.
I, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm callingthis out because I really felt a
connection to Adrian when they weretalking about him in the documentary,
(12:35):
and it's okay to be a nerd.
He is.
Don't take that personally.
No, I love it.
I love it.
He was traveling to Hong Kong,literally to photograph the new airport.
That was the pinnacle of his trip.
We'll find out if you,if it worked for him.
There's also Mark Newport, who's aBritish sports promoter living in
Hong Kong, who is returning homeafter a business trip to Russia.
(12:58):
Flight five nine three's crewconsisted of six total members.
The flight has both a main and a reliefcrew because it's such a long journey.
First, captain Andrea Delo will commandthe initial leg out of Moscow with Krinsky
as relief Captain First Officer Igor OVwill serve as co-pilot for both captains.
(13:26):
The cabin crew includes threeflight attendants as well.
So it's still not hugefor a plane that size.
If you think about it, it makessense to have relief because
it's such a long flight.
Yeah.
As the gleaming white Airbus with itsdistinctive blue and orange aero livery.
(13:46):
Prepares for departure.
Do you like how I usethe word livery in there?
Yes.
Thank you.
Air Flo Flight 5 9 3 takes off from Moscowat 4:39 PM local time on March 22nd, 1994.
So this is gonna be a red eye.
The sleek Airbus a three 10 climbssmoothly into the late afternoon
(14:07):
sky, beginning its journey eastwardon the trans Siberian airway.
For the first few hours, everythingproceeds exactly as planned.
Captain Donnel love navigates thebusy airspace around Moscow and guides
the plane eastward across Russia.
The autopilot is engagedmaintaining the aircraft at its
(14:28):
cruising altitude of 33,000 feetas the plane passes over siberia.
Roughly the halfway point throughthis journey, captain Dannel.
Takes his scheduled rest breakand he hands the controls
off to Captain Krinsky.
So now Captain Krinsky isthe captain of this plane.
(14:53):
The first officer remains the sameand he'll remain as co-pilot you
have control, says Danal Love.
I have control confirms Krinsky,which is very standard procedure.
When you are transferring command in thecockpit, verbalize it and let everybody
know exactly exactly what's going on.
(15:13):
Yes.
Which we learned the importanceof repeating commands from
our episode on Tenerif.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Okay.
Most of the passengers are now asleep.
We are more than fourhours into this flight.
It's been steady, it's been very calm.
Passengers are sleeping.
(15:35):
The plane is continuing itsjourney through the night sky
over the vast Siberian wilderness.
and The aircraft is cruisingvery smoothly on autopilot.
The Autopilot is essentially asophisticated computer system
that can control the plane'sspeed, altitude, and heading.
It works by sending signals to thevarious control surfaces of the aircraft.
(15:59):
The rudder, which controlssideways movement.
The elevators, which,just like an elevator.
Up and down.
Up and down.
Correct.
And the ailerons whichcontrol banking and rolling.
Hmm.
Okay.
Which you shouldn't be doingin a commercial aircraft.
(16:21):
But don't roll.
Who a commercial jet.
Please don't do that.
Modern autopilots can be partiallyengaged, allowing pilots to control
certain aspects of the flight whilethe computer still handles others.
This flexibility is beneficial, butas we will see, it also can create
confusion if the pilots don't fullyunderstand how the system operates.
(16:45):
Mm-hmm.
On the flight deck with mostpassengers sleeping, captain Krinsky
decides to do something that whiletechnically against regulations,
was really not uncommonfor the early nineties.
He wants to bring his kids to work.
Show him how cool his job is.
(17:05):
Uhhuh, oh my god.
A dad of the year.
Yeah.
My job is not very coolto like watch me do.
If I was a pilot it would be so awesome.
We have a toddler who I'm surewe've talked about many times, but
she loves to be in the shop withZach and see him wrenching on cars.
It's like one of her top threefavorite things of all time.
(17:27):
So I get it.
You wanna show your kid,you're a pilot bad ass.
So before nine 11, cockpit visits weremuch more common around the world.
Many of us who flew at children in the.
Late 1980s and 1990s, actuallyyou didn't fly, but I flew a ton.
Um, they have memories of beinginvited to peek inside the cockpit
(17:51):
or even chat with the pilots.
And this is so true.
I distinctly remembergetting pins from pilots.
I remember one time I wasflying with my mom and they
let me peek inside the cockpit.
Hmm.
Like very cool hands-oninteractions with the pilots.
Nowadays, you almost never see thepilots when you are boarding a flight.
(18:11):
They are like doing their thing.
They are in the cockpit.
And you are interacting strictlywith the flight attendants.
Well, it was definitely wellpast the nineties when I started
flying, but yes, man, I've never,never in my life seen the pilots.
So what happens next in this visit isgonna go way beyond a simple cockpit
(18:34):
peek In a flight attendant escortsELD A and Yana to the flight deck.
Their father proudly shows them around thesophisticated cockpit of the A three 10.
Pointing out the variousdisplays and controls, the
kids are very clearly excited.
Understandably.
It is not their first timein an aircraft cockpit.
(18:57):
They have flown with their fatheron domestic routes before, but
this is their first time in ahigh tech cockpit like the Airbus.
It had computerized systems, whichwas a dramatic contrast to the Soviet
made planes that they were familiarwith . So we know what happens next.
(19:18):
Because of the cockpit voice recorder.
Captain Krinsky asks his daughter,would you like to sit in my seat ? And
Yana hesitantly agrees, and her fatherhelps her into the captain's chair.
Can I turn it?
She asks, referring to the controlcolumn, essentially the steering
wheel of the aircraft, and herdad responds yes a little bit.
(19:43):
So Krinsky is extremely careful.
He knows that the autopilot isengaged and will resist any attempts
to manually control the plane.
What he does next is subtle,but very significant.
He turns a knob on the autopilot.
Panel called the heading SelectKnob, which tells the autopilot to
(20:06):
execute a very gentle left turn asthe plane begins to bank slightly.
It's fun.
Janna feels like she's controllingthe aircraft, but in reality it's
really her dad that just turned aswitch a little bit in the mm-hmm.
In the autopilot kind of maneuvered.
This gentle bank turn autopilot says Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's fun.
It's cute.
It's like a little, a little trick,and Janna totally calls him out on it.
(20:30):
She even says it was youwho turned the plane.
After a few minutes, Krinsky returnsthe aircraft to its original position,
and helps Yana out of the seatbecause it's her brother's turn.
So ELD eagerly takes the captain seat.
Folks, this is a 15-year-old boy withthe chance to sit in a pilot seat and
(20:52):
kids can't help but to touch everything.
I mean, this kid is pumped,like this is the age in America
where you got your permit.
He's so excited.
So he immediately gripsthe control column.
He's got no reservations like a sister.
So Krinsky asks him, if you turn tothe left, where will the plane go?
(21:13):
Left responses, elder correct.
Confirms his father, technicallyhis dad said, right, but
that's a little confusing.
Look out to the left, watchingfor the ground when we're turning.
So Eldar tries to turn it tothe left, the control column.
But unlike his sister'sexperience, no maneuver happens.
(21:34):
And that's because Krinsky hasn'tadjusted the autopilot to create
the illusion of the control.
The column feels stiff and it'sresistant to elders motions because
the autopilot is actually working tomaintain the plane's programmed course.
So the autopilot saying resistant justlike it's supposed to be correct, elder
(21:56):
pushes harder against the resistancebecause he wants to be able to control
the plane because he's 15 years old.
What no one in the cockpit realizes isthat on the A three 10 applying force to
the control column for a certain period.
30 seconds doesn't getignored by the autopilot.
(22:16):
It actually causes the autopilotto partially disconnect.
Hmm.
Surrendering control of the ailerons, thewing surfaces that control the banking.
But it continues to controlthe other aspects of flying.
So now the control of banking isin the hands of a 15-year-old.
(22:40):
Mm-hmm.
This design feature was intended togive pilots an emergency override.
But it comes with a critical drawback.
There's no audible warning whenthis partial disconnect happens.
Hmm.
Only a small visual indicator that's veryeasy to miss in a distracting cockpit.
(23:01):
Hmm.
No distractions.
And yeah, they've got allthe distractions there.
Two kids.
It's very fun.
It's bustling.
Mm-hmm.
Do, do, do, do our captainsmiss the indicator light.
Neither krinsky nor the first officernotice that by applying steady
pressure to the controls eldar hasjust inadvertently disconnected.
(23:24):
A crucial part of the autopilot systemnow without anyone realizing it.
15-year-old ldar.
Is controlling the bank angleof a passenger jet carrying
75 people over Siberia.
What happens next is going to unfoldin only four minutes and 30 seconds.
(23:44):
Wow.
Yeah.
From a cruising altitude of 32,000 feet.
Yes.
With the autopilot partially disconnectedand no one aware of it, aero flight 5
9 3 begins a gentle roll to the right.
At first, it's barely perceptible.
Elder is actually the firstto notice something unusual.
(24:05):
Why is it turning?
He asks, is it turning by itself?
Yes, it is.
His father responds, puzzled, exceptthey think the autopilot's still
on, so it's supposed to do that.
The plane is now banking at anincreasing angle, but confusion
(24:27):
reigns on the flight deck.
Captain Krinsky and First OfficerPI are baffled because as far as
they know, the autopilot shouldbe maintaining their course.
Captain ov, who is alsoin the cockpit visiting.
Offers an explanation.
We've gone into a zone, a holding pattern.
(24:49):
Now we know about holding patterns.
Mm-hmm.
Right from some of our other episodes.
What he means is that he thinks theplane has entered a programmed holding
pattern, which is a circular route.
Aircraft sometimes fly while theyare waiting to land at busy airports.
This is what happened in ourHelios episode where the plane was
just circling above until, um.
(25:11):
Till it ran outta gas,till it ran outta gas.
Spoiler alert on that one.
This seems to make sense when theynotice an arc appearing on their
navigation display that resembledthe pattern of a holding zone, but
they're flying over remote Siberia.
They are thousands of miles away from anyairport where they might need to hold.
(25:34):
The arc that they're seeing isactually the plane's own turning
path being traced on the display.
This misinterpretation costs themprecious seconds of reaction time
as the bank angle increases, thesituation rapidly deteriorates.
When a plane banks deeply,it can't maintain altitude
(25:57):
without increasing power.
So think of a car trying to climb a hill.
The autopilot is still controllingthe pitch in power and it attempts
to compensate by raising the noseand increasing thrust, but these
adjustments aren't enough tocounter the increasingly steep bank.
(26:21):
Yeah.
I would say that's fairly clear.
Okay.
The car you're drivinga manual car, correct?
Uphill?
Yeah.
With cruise control on, yeah.
So it is trying to maintain thespeed, but it can't drop a gear on its
own because it's a manual gear box.
Mm-hmm.
So our PMs are just dropping, dropping,dropping, and it can't possibly
do enough to continue that speed.
That's exactly it.
(26:42):
By the time the bank angle reaches45 degrees, which is way steeper,
that's a sharp turn than commercialaircraft normally operate.
Warning signs begin to appear.
Parts of the flight control displaygo dark indicating that the plane is
beyond its normal operating parameters.
What's wrong?
(27:03):
Someone asks nothing.
PIs responds.
Still not grasping theseverity of this situation.
Mm.
It bothers me that he doesn'tsense that something is wrong.
I mean, yeah.
And I don't think it's tough becauseall we have right, are voice recordings.
Yeah.
So we don't actually know what'sgoing through his head if he's trying
(27:24):
to remain calm because there arechildren in the cockpit, which, you
know, you would try to stay calm.
Absolutely.
Like if I.
Knew that something really bad washappening, but there were kids around me.
I would certainly do mybest to remain composed.
Yeah.
I knew if we were about to be ina big crash, I wouldn't tell Aria.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(27:44):
The confusion in the cockpit iscompounded by the fact that the pilots
have primarily flown Russian builtaircraft, which would've sounded
an alarm for such a situation.
The Airbus has a different philosophy.
It uses visual.
Rather than audible warnings forcertain conditions, a distinction
(28:04):
that these pilots really weren'tadequately trained to recognize by
now, the situation has become critical.
The aircraft is bankingat nearly 90 degrees.
Whoa.
Yeah.
90 degrees.
Folks.
Think about your basic geometry here, andnobody can feel that oh, they feel okay.
(28:27):
There's no way you don't feel, everybodyfeels that the passengers at this
point, I'm sure are awake, freakingout, and freaking the fuck out.
And the ones that didn't wake upfast enough have fallen out of
their seats and into another seat.
Yes.
So it's now at nearly 90 degrees,and it is rapidly losing altitude.
(28:49):
The extreme angle creates disorientationand very powerful G-Force that
push everybody against theirseats making movement difficult.
Get out, get out.
Captain Krinsky shouts to Eldar,but the teenager can barely move due
to the forces pressing on his body.
His father strugglesto reach the controls.
(29:11):
As the plane continues, itsdeadly roll throughout the cabin.
Sleeping passengers are jolted awake.
As the plane enters its steepbank, unsecured items are flying.
Mm-hmm.
Around as the altitudebecomes increasingly abnormal.
As the plane continues rolling,it enters a steep dive.
(29:35):
This is so scary.
So it's, is that becauseof lack of velocity?
So the nose can't stay up as much?
Yeah.
It automatically dips down.
Mm-hmm.
So now the plane is getting close tobeing upside down at this point, and
it is also now in a very steep dive.
An automated stall warning beginsto sound a critical alert indicating
(29:58):
that the aircraft is losing lift.
The plane safety systems kick in,pushing the nose down to regain
air speed to avoid a stall.
Which only accelerates thedive that they are already in.
The aircraft is now plummetingat 40,000 feet per minute, about
(30:19):
450 miles per hour straight down.
And if everybody recalls, when westarted our journey, we were only at 32.
33,000.
Yeah.
33,000 feet.
Which means they are going to hitthe ground in less than one minute.
Mm-hmm.
First Officer
PIs pulls back hard on his controlcolumn, trying desperately to
(30:44):
bring the nose up initially.
His efforts actually do seem to work.
The plane begins to pull out of the dive.
But in the stress of the moment, he overcorrects, pulling the nose up too sharply.
The aircraft having gained tremendousspeed in its dive now climbs rapidly,
but quickly loses forward momentum.
(31:05):
So this is like a cartrying to climb a wall.
It simply does not have enough power.
It's not going to be able to do it.
The airspeed drops dangerouslyand the plane does stall.
The wings no longer generateenough lift to keep it flying.
(31:27):
The stall causes the airbus toenter a spin, which, oh my God.
I mean, obviously being in an aviationaccident incident disaster is.
Terrifying.
And it is a massive fear that Ihave, but the idea of being in a
commercial aircraft that is spinningseems just so wrong in every single
(31:51):
way, just like brutal discomfort.
When we talk about a spin, arewe talking about a 360 or are we
talking about like a barrel roll?
A corkscrew.
Okay.
Yeah, a corkscrew.
So this is one of, if not the mostdangerous condition that an aircraft.
Can experience.
the corkscrew towards the groundis almost always catastrophic when
(32:15):
impossible will come outta Yeah.
When it is a commercial aircraft.
By this point, captain Krinsky has managedto get back into his seat working together
he and our first officerfight the controls.
They are trying desperately torecover from the spin as pilots,
they know the right proceduresfor a situation like this, lower
(32:39):
the nose to gain air speed level.
The wings pull up gently so thatyou do not against overdo it.
Yes, you don't wanna overdo it, butexecuting these maneuvers in such extreme
conditions is enormously difficult.
Mm-hmm.
I've got it.
I've got it.
I've got full throttle.
Krinsky calls out applyingmaximum power to the engines.
(33:02):
He pumps the rudder pedals trying to usethe vertical tail to break the spin Slowly
their efforts do begin to show results.
The corkscrew motion starts to diminish.
The plane actually begins to level out.
For brief moment.
It seems that they mayhave recovered control.
(33:24):
Mm.
The aircraft responds to their inputs.
However, they've lost toomuch altitude too quickly.
So remember, they hadessentially 40 seconds.
Yeah.
Basically to figure this out, whichmeans any, even close to that time
means you are close to the ground.
(33:44):
Correct.
So, in the chaos of the fourand a half minutes, basically
that things went terribly wrong.
They dropped from 33,000 feetto only a few thousand feet.
And they are in rugged Siberian terrainwhere they have big mountains Yes.
(34:05):
And cliffs and, yes.
At 11:59 PM Moscow time, justover four minutes after LDAR
first moved to the controls.
Aero flight 5 9 3 slams intoa hillside in Siberia, and it
explodes immediately on impact.
Wow.
All 75 people on boardare killed instantly.
(34:28):
Yeah.
The aircraft's last moments arerecorded by the flight data recorder.
The final words captured on the cockpitvoice recorder are the frantic efforts of
the pilots trying to save their aircraft.
Their passengers, their children.
Children in the Air Traffic ControlCenter, controllers wait for flight 5 9 3
to report passing their airspace boundary.
(34:51):
But the call never comes Withinhours, search parties are dispatched
to the remote wooded hillsidewhere the radar contact was lost.
What they find is a scene of completedevastation, a testament to the
unforgiving consequences of evenmomentary lapses in aviation safety.
(35:11):
Let's talk about the investigationand what went terribly wrong.
As dawn breaks over the Siberianwilderness on March 23rd, 1994, search and
rescue teams converge on the crash scene.
It's desolate.
Desolate scene debris is scatteredacross a wooded hillside . The
(35:33):
scattered wreckage of what was oncea state-of-the-art, Airbus A three
10 now lies frozen in the snow.
It's immediately clear to thefirst responders that this
is a recovery, not a rescue.
The violence of the impacthas left no survivors at all.
News of the crash sends shockwaves through ALO and through
(35:55):
the Russian aviation community.
How could one of the newest, most,most advanced, advanced aircraft
piloted by By the best pilot, thebest of the best, fall out of the sky?
Because that is what itlooked like happened.
(36:15):
Yeah, it happened so fast.
It just that it lookslike it just dropped.
Dropped out of the sky initially.
Speculation in the Russian media suggestsa terrorist attack after all russia in
the early 1990s was experiencing verysignificant political instability.
(36:36):
They were hated for sure.
Yes, for sure.
But investigators are notjumping to conclusions.
Their focus is on recovering crucialevidence, including the black box
outstanding, the flight data recorderand the cockpit voice recorder.
Yes.
These devices, which are,what color are they, Zach?
(36:58):
Were they blue?
They're bright.
Orange.
Orange.
That's what they are.
Bright orange, which makes themeasier to find in wreckage.
Yeah, there is a method to the madness.
Um, they are designed towithstand extreme conditions.
The flight data recorder logshundreds of parameters about
the aircraft's performance.
While the cockpit voice recorder capturesall sounds and conversations on the
(37:23):
flight deck, the Russian governmentassigns Chief accident investigator.
Ivan Ky.
I'm gonna call him Ky, orI'll just call him Ivan.
Chief Accident Investigator Ivan.
He is going to lead the inquiryinitial examination of the crash
site offers puzzling clues,unbroken bottles of champagne.
(37:49):
A flight attendant found wearingan oxygen mask and most strangely.
The body of at least one childthrown into the cockpit area.
The recovered flight data recorderindicates that the engines were running
normally when the aircraft hit the ground,ruling out engine failure as a cause.
(38:11):
But ien needs expert help to fullyunderstand what happened to the
sophisticated Western build aircraft.
He turns to Vladimir Bov, anexperienced test pilot, and crash
investigator at Moscow's Grov Institute.
So Vladimir is particularly wellqualified for this investigation
(38:33):
because he had been directly involvedin testing and certifying the A three
10 before the Russians purchased itbecause of the fate of this plane.
The fate of this airline.
My first reaction was shock.
That is what he said.
That's a quote.
I remember spending a sleeplessnight distraught and trying to
(38:54):
figure out what might have happened.
So he's invested.
Let's see what he figures out.
The investigation begins in earnestwith a complete analysis of the cockpit
voice recorder and what it revealsobviously stuns the investigators.
They hear Captain Krinsky invitinghis children into the cockpit and
(39:16):
allowing them to sit in his seat tohandle the controls of the aircraft.
Frowned upon it's, yeah, it's a choice.
Can I turn this?
They hear eldar ask.
Yes, but if you turn it to theleft, where will the plane go?
His father responds the To the left?
Yeah.
The recording continues capturing thegrowing confusion as the plane begins.
(39:39):
It's un uncom commanded turn, andobviously the subsequent loss of control,
the desperate struggle of the pilots torecover the aircraft in its final moments.
For investigators.
This revelation is shocking.
Not only were there unauthorizedpersons in the cockpit, but a child
(40:00):
had been allowed to sit in the controlsof a passenger aircraft in flight.
This is a serious violation of safetyprotocols, but the children's presence
alone does not equal airplane crash.
No.
Right?
It is weird that the kids are in thecockpit, but that is not the direct cause
(40:21):
of this plane going down, and they needto figure out what on earth happens.
The breakthrough comes whenour investigator discovers that
approximately two and a half minutes.
Before the crash, while LDARwas at the controls, the
autopilot partially disconnected.
This is really that aha moment.
(40:42):
To confirm his theory, hetravels to Airbus headquarters
in France to reconstruct theincident on a flight simulator.
Using information from the flight datarecorder, he meticulously recreates
LD A R'S actions at the controls.
What he discovers is really alarming.
(41:04):
When LDAR applied sustained pressureto the control column, it caused the
autopilot to disconnect from the partof the autopilot that controls banking.
The control surfaces that managethe aircraft's banking and rolling
motions were disconnected, andit happened without any warning.
To the pilots.
(41:25):
So what they figured out is obviously ifyou hold it long enough, it turns off.
It turns off, which is reallycritical information, for pilots to
have, and they did not know that.
Yeah, I would think that if the pilotknew it could just shut itself off.
He probably wouldn't have let his childrensit in there pushing against it for
(41:48):
so long, or sit in there at all 100%.
The Russian pilots trainedprimarily on Soviet aircraft, were
unaware of this characteristic.
Their Russian planes, likewe said before, had alarms.
When things like this would havehappened and nothing beeped at
them and said, this is not good.
(42:09):
No, no.
It only had that small visualindicator that went undetected.
So the investigation also reveals whythe crew misinterpreted the situation.
Once the plane began turning, when theysaw the arc appearing on the navigation
display, they thought that they hadsomehow entered the holding pattern.
(42:30):
So this misunderstanding, thinking thatthe computer was just executing a program
maneuver rather than the controls of a15-year-old caused them to not panic.
They should have beenpanicking immediately.
Immediate panic.
Once the bank angle became too steep,the aircraft did lose altitude.
(42:53):
It began the dive, itstalled, = they tried to save it.
It entered the corkscrew and ultimatelyended up crashing into a hillside.
The investigation concludes that whilethe immediate cause of the accident was
LD a's inadvertent disengagement of partof the autopilot, there were many other
factors that contributed to the disaster.
(43:14):
First, the fact that hewas in the captain's seat.
Yeah, he was piloting a plane autopilot.
On or not, he should nothave been in that seat
Second is the pilot's unfamiliaritywith the specific characteristics of
this plane and how even though there'sno audible warning, there is a visual
(43:35):
warning, and they were not aware of that.
Third was their misinterpretationof the situation.
Which caused them to not react properly.
Had they reacted and corrected it,this plane would not have crashed.
And finally, their difficulty in executingthe proper recovery techniques once
the aircraft entered extreme altitudesbeyond the normal flight envelope.
(43:59):
So as investigators would laterobserve, it was not the crew's
fault, but really their misfortune.
If a person doesn't know how to dosomething because he was never taught
to you, can't really blame him.
And I really thought thatquote was pretty powerful.
I like all these companies thatkind of say stuff like that and
(44:23):
have their people's back evenafter something tragic happens.
I mean, this is theinvestigator, so that's.
Really good because that's not evena, yeah, that's not even like a press
release from, but genuinely the trainingfrom air flop just seems so poor.
Like to not understand what the warningsystem is is just a huge oversight.
I know, I know.
It's pretty wild because they literallywent to a bootcamp, but it feels like that
(44:46):
bootcamp didn't quite do the bootcamp.
Taught them the things that theyknow like you're gonna fly the plane.
Yeah.
Obviously.
Yeah.
It feels like it did notcover the critical Yeah.
Information.
So the crash of airlock flight 5 93sent ripples through the aviation
world, particularly in Russia wherethis plane and this, these pilots
(45:12):
are really supposed to be thislike fresh face of new aviation.
Mm-hmm.
And I mean, this is a hell of a wayto kick off their new PR campaign.
Yeah.
It's not good.
And obviously, and far more tragically,the families of the 75 victims, the
revelation that the crash had been causedby such a preventable series of events,
(45:38):
beginning with the captain, allowinghis children to handle the controls.
Many of them felt angeralongside grief because this
was such a preventable incident.
So Brenda Clark, who is the mother ofMark New Newport, who was the guy who
was gonna go take the pictures mm-hmm.
(46:01):
Of the traveling justto see the new airport.
Yeah.
At the Hong Kong airport.
She said, what I objected to wasthe way we were treated by alo.
After the accident, theywouldn't tell us anything.
They denied everything.
I wanted to know why my son died.
I wanted to know why these men hadbeen allowed to do such a thing.
(46:23):
In the days following the crash,airlock flew families of the deceased
to Moscow, then to the crash sitein Siberia for memorial services.
Chinese relatives performed traditionalrituals, dropping messages written
on paper into the forested areawhere their loved ones had died.
And Western families laid flowers.
(46:43):
The authorities also took familiesto a morgue in a town near the
crash site where recovered bodieswere being held to identify.
Many were too damaged.
To be identified and the familieswere asked to look at recovered items
of clothing and personal effects tohelp with the identification process.
(47:08):
That's just brutal.
The aero flaw, the crash was a majorsetback to this new transformed image
that they were trying to uh, put out.
Higher management initially triedto downplay the circumstances
surrounding the accident, aware of howembarrassing the revelations would be.
(47:30):
As Boris Riach, an aerospace consultantin Moscow would say air flop managers
and executives tried to conceal resultsand downplay the importance of this
accident because it was very embarrassing.
End quote.
Well, yeah, guy, that's sometimesthat's really how the cookie crumbles.
(47:53):
The crash also raised serious questionsfor Airbus because, while there shouldn't
have been children in the cockpit, therealso probably shouldn't be a random
disengagement feature of your autopilotthat doesn't have a really good signal.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's also the same way for cars incruise control, like tapping the brake
(48:17):
pedal disengages the cruise, becauseif you need to slow down, you see
something before a car can see something.
That's even with the brand newstuff that has the radar for
all the other cars in traffic.
That's fair.
Well, let's talk aboutsome changes that happened.
In the aftermath of the accident,several significant changes were
(48:39):
implemented in aviation practices.
First cockpit access became muchmore restricted, so while the
complete lockdown of cockpits wouldcome later, following nine 11, the
accident accelerated the trend towardslimiting cockpit visits, especially
(48:59):
during critical phases of flight.
It, it tracks.
Yeah.
If you're gonna have people in the cockpitdo it before the plane is in the air.
A a second.
Airbus did review the autopilot systemand the warning indicators, while the
basic functionality remained allowingpilots to override the autopilot by
applying sustained pressure, latermodels would incorporate clearer
(49:24):
warnings such as, audible sounds
yeah, I mean, just getsomething that announces Yeah.
Autopilot off.
So they did make someimprovements to that.
Third airlines around the worldwould strengthen their pilot training
programs, particularly for crewstransitioning to aircraft with
different control philosophies.
(49:46):
So I mean, this is a huge issue.
These pilots, even though they werequote unquote trained and they were the
best of the best and whatever, if theydon't know that a feature of an airplane
exists, they can, they can't use that.
Correct.
Yeah.
Correct.
So that was addressed.
The concept of upset recoverytraining, teaching pilots how to
(50:07):
handle extreme flight altitudes andconditions really gained new importance.
That's fair.
Yeah.
The crash of flight 5 9 3 came duringa troubling \ period of aviation
safety in 1994, the same year as thisaccident, a series of crashes in the
United States raised questions abouthow commercial pilots handle upset
(50:31):
situations, conditions where aircraftfind themselves in extreme altitudes.
Beyond normal flight parameters.
So there were a bunch of crashes thathappened in the United States, and we
will actually end up covering, most ofthose, if not all of them at some point.
We, I mean, depend on stories.
We gotta cover 'em all.
Oh, we will not run outta stories.
That's one thing where it's likea, you know, like a murder podcast.
(50:53):
You don't run outta murders.
And believe it or not, we will notrun out of plane crashes or incidents.
I would say that there's probablymore murders in the world
than there are plane crashes.
Yes.
But as you keep reminding me, wedon't just do plane crashes, we do
trains, we do cars, we do planes,trains, paragliding, automobiles.
We do yachts, yacht, yacht.
(51:17):
Within a year the industry had begunoffering a specialized upset recovery
training, teaching pilot skills tohandle extreme situations like the
one that developed on flight 5 9 3.
While this training was initiated inresponse to several incidents, the
lessons from the Airlock crash wereincorporated into these programs.
The victims of Flight 5 9 3 are buriedin various locations based on their
(51:42):
nationalities and their families wishes.
Those who couldn't be identified,22 bodies in total were cremated
together by the Russian authorities.
22 people, just like peopleknow that they never identified
their people, so they're gone.
(52:03):
Yeah, but they just knowthey're somewhere in this 22.
It's horrible.
The crew of the Airbus Captain KrinskyFirst, officer Pisco and first Captain
Dan ov are buried in a cemetery inMoscow, in a section reserved for heroes
alongside the firefighters who died atthe Chernobyl nuclear plant Elder and
(52:27):
Yana Krinsky lying next to their father.
Looking back at this tragedy,aviation experts see it as a powerful
example of how multiple factorscan align to create disaster.
Zach, what is that theory called?
The Swiss cheese theory.
Swiss Cheese theory.
It's the Swiss cheese theory when abunch of random things all line up.
(52:50):
Like if you stack multiple slices ofSwiss cheese and then there happens
to be one where it goes all the waythrough, like there's one hole hole
all the through like 18 pieces.
Yes, correct.
That is the Swiss cheese theory andthat is exactly what happened here.
The legacy of Flight 5 9 3 lives on inthe procedures and trainings that help
(53:11):
keep flying safe today, the absoluteprohibition against unauthorized personnel
handling the aircraft controls has reallybecome one of aviation's golden rules.
Mm-hmm.
If it ain't yours, don't touch it.
You don't touch it, you don't touch it.
No matter how routine a flight may seem,how experienced a crew might be, the rules
(53:35):
exist because the consequences of breakingthem even briefly can be catastrophic.
I am such a rule follower.
Yes, you're, it's why I do roadracing because I like rigid black and
white, told how she's to do things.
Yes.
I like that.
(53:55):
I don't, yeah, I know.
And that's why you're a drifter.
All right, Zach, thatis our story for today.
What do you think I told you?
It was a crazy one.
It is a crazy one.
As we always talk about, there's a,you know, good that comes out of all of
these because it keeps travel safer now.
Being a dad, I feel terrible for.
(54:17):
One, the mom being the onlyone left in the family.
but also I can't imagine the dad'sthoughts about his family when he
knows that this plane is going down.
I guess he didn't necessarilyknow it was going down.
They thought they saved it and thenthey hit the side of the hill basically.
I dunno, there's a lot to unpack there.
I thought this one would hit a littleextra hard because you're dad and
(54:40):
this is really also a daddy and thisis really, you know, a story about
a dad who was just trying to dosomething really cool with his kids.
Something that, somethingthat no kids get to do ever.
Yeah.
And it just ended so badly.
I am curious.
Yeah, no, please go.
Let's talk about if, you know,um, what was the media like
(55:04):
surrounding that captain?
Obviously people were upset, were mad,and there people saying, Hey, they
shouldn't have ever had kids in there.
but I'm curious, was there alot of like hatred towards that?
Mother Was the airline sued like crazy?
It's interesting.
Rattles off of my brain for sure.
And there were lawsuits Yeah.
(55:26):
And settlements involved in this.
So the relatives of the victims,including those from Hong Kong,
they did initiate a lawsuit againstALO and they wanted compensation
for the death of their loved ones.
Understandably.
Yeah.
So at least 25 families wererepresented in legal actions.
The lawsuits time to meet the two yearstatute of limitations for such claims.
(55:50):
Sue, get your money.
The family sought compensationabove the Warsaw Convention cap,
which was at the time $20,000.
So they argued that the circumstances,specifically the fact that a
child basically crashed this planewere warranted, hire damages.
(56:12):
One noticeable case is Lamb versus Alo, inwhich the plaintiff who lost her husband
in the crash sought over $10 million.
Wow.
Which is obviously a lotmore than the cap of.
$20,000.
Maybe I'll do a deep dive at somepoint on the cap and why that exists.
(56:34):
I don't know if that is like toprotect airlines from No, probably
from having to pay out too much money.
Exactly.
You picture if it was $10million per person Yeah.
And you're paying out too 78 familiesif it, every person was unrelated.
But yeah, I mean thatwould absolutely be you.
That's a, that's a quarter full planeand Yeah, that's a lot, lot of dollars.
(56:56):
So it could, it can absolutely bankrupt.
A a a billion dollar higher Yes.
An entire airline.
Especially one that'sa little bit smaller.
So, airlock reportedly attempted tolimit legal action by making cash
offers to the families of the victims,particularly those from Hong Kong.
(57:16):
These offers were really seenas an effort to settle out of
court and avoid any litigation.
Yeah.
The law firm that represented a bunchof the flight victims filed a suit
in France where Airbus, the aircraftmanufacturer was headquartered.
The families that they representedultimately obtained substantial
(57:39):
economic recoveries throughsettlements, although the specific
terms and amounts are not provided.
Yeah.
I suppose that would've been anotherone of the questions, like we know
that it was the pilot and his children.
Mm-hmm.
Like that is the main source of this, but.
It really bothers me the lack of training.
Like they were taught how to fly a plane.
They already know how to flya plane, teach them all the
(58:02):
logistical stuff about this plane.
I'll just give like a quick overviewof, I don't know if this is all of
them, but this is the ones at leastthat were listed in my research.
So there is the woman who lost her husbandand she specifically went after aero
flock in the US was the jurisdictionand she sought $10 million in damages
(58:22):
a little bit over that technically.
Then there was a lawsuitby the Hong Kong families.
This was in uK or Hong Kong court,there was conflicting information there.
And this was settled, but therewas not a confirmation of how
much that was for was Correct?
Correct.
(58:42):
There was another class actionlawsuit with multiple victims.
So this was that like big group one, andthey went after both ALOT and Airbus.
Mm.
And this was in France.
This was settled.
I'm glad Airbus had to pay out somethingbecause yeah, I do feel not a large, but
(59:05):
still feels large portion of that blameis on them because the pilots didn't know
that they should be looking for something.
How do you just not know that?
I don't know.
And that information was provided bythe Wikipedia page, just so people know.
Wikipedia.
Fun fact, did I just do Wikipedia?
Fun fact.
Mm-hmm.
Did I say that?
Yeah.
I need to give full creditto where that is from.
(59:27):
That's from Love Murder.
Hmm.
They will do at the end of theirepisodes a Wikipedia fun fact.
And I listen to that podcast somuch that when I say Wikipedia,
I automatically do that.
Shout out to Love Murder.
If you are into Murder.
I literally can't recommendtheir podcast more.
It's unbelievably well researchedand they're just so fun to listen to.
(59:47):
So anyway, if you enjoyed this episode,please rate, review and subscribe.
And if you do write a review.
We will send you a sticker.
Just go ahead and message us onFacebook or Instagram or email us at
final boarding call podcast@gmail.com.
(01:00:08):
It rolls right off the tongue.
make sure that you join us next timewhen we will be exploring another
transportation disaster story.
Until then, remember to stow yourtray tables, fasten your seat belts,
and prepare for the unexpectedbecause not every trip reaches.
(01:00:30):
It's final destination.
Goodbye.
Peace.
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