Original subtitles

Pilot: Hold the control column! Just hold it!

Man: Guys!

Narrator: A Russian flight to Hong Kong

is in serious trouble.

Pilot: The other way!

Co-pilot: The other way!

Pilot: To the left!

Now to the right!!

Narrator: Gravity has become a deadly force...

As the crew fights to keep the plane

from falling 33,000 feet to earth.

Pilot: Get out! Co-pilot: Back!

Narrator: The cause of all the chaos:

A 15-year-old is at the controls.

Co-pilot: The ground is right there!

Flight attendant: Ladies and gentlemen, we are starting our approach.

Pilot: We lost both engines!

Flight attendant: Put the mask over your nose.

Emergency descent.

Pilot: Mayday, mayday.

Flight attendant: Brace for impact!

Controller: I think I lost one.

Man: Investigation starting...

Man: He's gonna crash!

Narrator: March 22, 1994.

Moscow.

15-year-old Eldar Kudrinsky is going abroad for the first time.

He needs every gadget he has.

Yaroslav Kudrinsky: Eldar! Uncle Volodya is waiting!

Eldar Kudrinsky: I'm ready, I'm ready!

Yaroslav: Come on.

Narrator: But this is no ordinary kid.

Eldar's father is captain Yaroslav Kudrinsky,

an international airline pilot.

In Russia, that means membership in a privileged group

and access to luxuries most citizens can only dream of.

Vladimir Makarov: Ah, captain is here.

Now we can take off.

Eldar: Hello, uncle Volodya.

Makarov: Hello!

Narrator: Aeroflot allows pilots' families

to travel once a year at a discount.

So captain Kudrinsky is taking his children

on a four-day trip to Hong Kong.

Yana Kudrinsky: Mom, it won't all fit!

Kudrinsky: Anybody would think we're going for a year!

Victoria Kudrinsky: Where's your daughter?

Makarov: Listening to the music in the car.

By the time they're our age, these kids are going to be deaf.

Eldar: What?

Makarov: Deaf.

Eldar: Pardon?

Narrator: Captain Vladimir Makarov--

Volodya to his friends-- is an Aeroflot pilot, too.

He's also going to Hong Kong on vacation

and will be keeping an eye on the kids during the flight.

Mrs. Kudrinsky is only going as far as the airport

to see them off.

Victoria: Eldar, Yana, promise you'll call

as soon as you get there.

Volodya, you will make them call me?

Makarov: Um...yeah.

Yana: We'll call as soon as we can, ok?

Kudrinsky: Come on, come on, come on!

Victoria, translated: Yaroslav and I loved to travel,

and so did the kids.

They loved seeing new places, learning new things.

There was a chance for them to come along with their father,

and they jumped at it.

Narrator: Eldar and Yana aren't the only ones boarding 593.

Most of the 63 passengers are businessmen

from Taiwan and Hong Kong,

looking for opportunities in the new Russia.

Others, like Adrian Deaville, have come from London,

flying Aeroflot because it offers

a cheap connection to Asia.

He's the manager of a camera shop

in northern England

and has a passion for aircraft.

He's going on a two-week vacation to Hong Kong

to photograph the new airport they've just built.

Joyce Deaville: He'd go as far as he could

if he thought there was a good airport somewhere in the world.

He'd try his best to get to that airport,

just to go and make some nice photographs.

Barrie Deaville: And the trip to Hong Kong grew from that,

because he wanted to see this brand-new airport,

which was a feat of engineering at the time.

Narrator: Mark Newport is a British sports promoter

who lives in Hong Kong.

Brenda Clark: Mark was in the army,

he was in the forces.

And he went to Hong Kong,

and he just loved it.

And got married out there.

He had chosen Aeroflot--

I'd never heard of it until then--

because that was just a cheap flight home.

Narrator: In 1994 Russia is in a state of great change.

Three years earlier,

the old soviet union finally collapsed.

A new Russia is bursting out

from behind the torn iron curtain.

Its people want the freedom of the west, the lifestyle,

the international travel.

Russia's state-owned airline, Aeroflot,

is getting a makeover, too.

They struggle to buy five new aircraft

from the french company Airbus Industrie--

the $70 million state-of-the-art airbus A310-300.

Though it seats fewer than 200 passengers,

it can fly three times farther

than any of Russia's biggest passenger aircraft.

The A 310 is a fully automated airplane,

equipped with sophisticated fail-safe systems.

Aeroflot hopes it will help improve

the company's checkered safety record.

Greg Feith: Any time there is a national carrier

supported by their particular government,

if that government is in turmoil,

whether it's financially or political turmoil,

it affects everything that's associated

with that core government.

Aeroflot is a national carrier,

and so there is always the perception

that they may not have had the monetary resources

and the wherewithal to be a very structured carrier

with a lot of oversight

to ensure a high level of safety at that time.

Narrator: Aeroflot has created a new, prestigious division

around the airbus fleet: Russian international airlines.

Pilots wear special uniforms, they fly state-of-the-art planes

and travel the world's top destinations.

Ria represents a new, modern Russia to the world.

Boris Rybak: After collapse of the soviet union,

Aeroflot, still controlled by government,

was forced to look for profits

and develop a network which would be commercially justified.

Narrator: For Russia's premier airline,

Aeroflot handpicks an elite corps of first class pilots.

Each of them has thousands of hours of flying time,

impeccable safety records and fluent English.

They're given special training

by the manufacturers of the aircraft,

Airbus Industrie.

Victor Sazhenin, translated: The airline had around 3,000

pilots at that time.

Only 16 men were to be sent to be trained first.

Only the best of the best made it.

Valery Dudkin, translated: Kudrinsky and I started working

here at Sheremetyevo at the same time,

and naturally, we first got acquainted simply as neighbors.

Then we found out we were both pilots.

Later we both trained for the A 310.

We studied together.

Victoria: I remember how hard it was for them to master it,

because the technology was quite different,

so they were working very hard.

But they all got through it and started to fly.

Narrator: Yana and Eldar are finally on board the new plane

they've heard so much about from their father.

Kudrinsky: Hey.

Now, you two behave,

or uncle Volodya will push the eject button.

Eldar: Voom! Makarov: Yeah!

Narrator: Kudrinsky has 900 hours of flying the A 310

under his belt.

Kudrinsky: I must go now, ok?

Victoria: It was their first trip abroad,

but naturally, they had come along with him

on other trips within Russia.

They were quite well-traveled for their ages.

Narrator: First captain Danilov will command the flight

through the busy flight corridors out of Moscow.

Relief captain Kudrinsky will then take over.

When he does,

first officer Piskarev becomes his co-pilot.

All three are first class pilots.

On this new A 310,

the flight deck is fully computerized.

Like other state-of-the-art aircraft,

it's equipped with a sophisticated autopilot

that can fly the plane for long stretches of the flight.

International routes, like this one to Hong Kong,

are Aeroflot's lifeline.

They bring in precious hard currency

at a time when the domestic market

is struggling to turn a profit.

Flight 593 takes off at 4:39 p.m. Local time.

Then it will join the Trans-Siberian Airway

flying east towards Mongolia and China.

It's a smooth flight.

Only four hours into the ten-hour trip,

they've just passed over Novosibirsk in Siberia,

almost halfway.

But Eldar and Yana are too excited to sleep.

Having negotiated the busy airways out of Moscow,

first captain Danilov takes a rest break.

He hands over control to relief captain Kudrinsky,

who now becomes acting captain for the next leg of the journey.

Igor Piskarev: You have control.

Kudrinsky: I have control.

Makarov: Still awake?

Eldar: Yes. Why?

Makarov: Shall we surprise your father?

Eldar: In the cockpit?

Makarov: Mm-hmm.

Eldar: Oh, yeah!

Makarov: Would you like that?

Ok, let's go.

Narrator: Aeroflot's most technically advanced aircraft

is now cruising on autopilot at 33,000 feet.

It's a calm, windless night.

Captain Kudrinsky's children

are about to pay him a surprise visit in the cockpit.

Makarov: Captain, you have some very important visitors.

Shall I bring them in?

Kudrinsky: Ok.

Come on in!

Eldar: Wow! Yana: Hi, dad.

Kudrinsky: This is first officer Igor Vladimirovich Piskarev.

Piskarev: Hello. Eldar: Hi.

Piskarev: So what do you think of our new airplane?

Yana: It's very nice.

Eldar: It's amazing!

Kudrinsky: It's quite different from our old Russian planes.

Yana: Daddy, what's that?

Kudrinsky: Oh, this is the flight computer.

It flies the plane.

It does everything automatically.

Now, come and sit in my seat.

Would you like to? Come on.

Narrator: It's a quiet flight.

Many passengers are sleeping,

unaware of what is taking place on the flight deck.

Yana: Daddy, can I turn this?

Kudrinsky: Yeah.

Now, Yana, would you like to pilot the plane?

Yana: No.

Kudrinsky: Put your hands on the control column.

Go on, go on, go on.

But don't touch any buttons, ok, especially this red one,

autopilot switch, you don't touch it.

Alright?

Narrator: Kudrinsky turns the heading select knob.

It doesn't disengage the autopilot,

but allows him to turn the plane slightly to the left.

It makes his daughter think she's flying the aircraft.

The artificial horizon shows the plane is slowly banking left.

This instrument is vital when you can't see the ground,

because it shows the pilot how level the aircraft is

in relation to the horizon.

Yana: It was you!

You turned the plane!

Narrator: Kudrinsky now puts the aircraft

back onto its preset course...

While first officer Piskarev

radios local air traffic control with their position.

Piskarev: Novokuznetsk, this is SU 593.

Flight level 3-3-0.

Heading 1-0-5.

Narrator: Flight 593 is now over 2,000 miles east of Moscow,

near the middle of Siberia.

Controller: Sierra uniform 593,

Novokuznetsk flight level 3-5-0, heading 1-0-5.

Piskarev: Sierra uniform 593, estimating Zakir at 17:59.

Narrator: Now it's Eldar's turn at the wheel.

He's been waiting a long time for this moment.

Makarov: Pilot being filmed!

Eldar: Are you filming?

Makarov: Yes, I am!

Eldar: Can I turn this?

Kudrinsky: Yeah.

But if you turn it to the left, where will the plane go?

Eldar: Left.

Kudrinsky: Right. Look out to the left,

watching for the ground when we're turning.

Narrator: Eldar finds the control column quite stiff.

It seemed to move easily when his sister was doing it,

so he tries harder.

But he can't make the plane turn

because the autopilot is keeping it on course.

Kudrinsky: Is the plane turning?

Narrator: Suddenly the column turns easily.

Eldar: Great!

Kudrinsky: Is the plane turning to the left?

Eldar: Yes, yes, it is.

Makarov: Set the horizon to normal for him.

Narrator: Once again, his father switches the heading select knob

back to its original setting...

Ending the turn...

And Eldar's illusion of flying the plane.

Captain Kudrinsky then selects navigation mode.

It tells the autopilot to put the plane

back on course to Hong Kong.

Yana: Dad? Dad?

Narrator: But Eldar is still holding the wheel to the left.

It's become stiff again.

Yana: Can I go back to my seat?

Kudrinsky: What for?

You'll only go to sleep.

And don't run in the first class,

or they will fire us.

Narrator: Eldar now turns his control column

slightly to the right,

enjoying his time at the controls.

Yana: Well, I am going shopping on temple street.

It's a famous market that only open at night.

Eldar: Why is it turning?

Kudrinsky: Is it turning by itself?

Eldar: Yes, it is.

Narrator: It's been just over three minutes

since Eldar sat down in the pilot's seat.

The plane is tilting sharply,

a turn that's getting steeper every second.

The plane appears to be turning by itself.

But no one seems to know why.

Makarov: ...kind of zone.

Piskarev: We've gone into a zone, a holding pattern.

Kudrinsky: Have we?

Piskarev: Of course we have!

Narrator: An arc has replaced the straight direction line

on the screen.

The arc looks like a plane

in a holding pattern around an airport.

As they study the screen, the plane continues to turn--

it's now banked at 45 degrees,

which is steeper than what it was built for.

Suddenly the command bars disappear

from the primary flight display.

The crew no longer has any information

about course or heading.

The plane is flying at 370 miles an hour

and banking hard.

Like a quick turn in a sports car,

the sudden movement of the aircraft

begins to push everyone into their seats.

Makarov: Guys!

Narrator: The A 310's autopilot works to keep the plane aloft.

Suddenly the nose pitches up.

The increased G-force

makes it difficult for Piskarev to reach the controls.

He does his best...

But nothing happens.

Piskarev's hard turn to the left has had no effect on the plane.

Kudrinsky: Ok, hold it.

Hold the control column!

Narrator: Eldar is the only one

with both hands fully on the controls.

Kudrinsky: The other way!

Narrator: He can only follow the most basic orders.

He can't get up because the speed of the turn

is pushing him back in his seat.

Makarov: Turn it to the left!

Kudrinsky: To the left!

Piskarev: To the left! Now to the right!

The other way!

Eldar: I am turning it left!

Kudrinsky: Ok, get out!

Narrator: Eldar has been in the pilot's seat

for just over 4 minutes,

and now he can't leave.

His body feels twice its normal weight.

Kudrinsky: Get out! Get out!

Narrator: Kudrinsky can do nothing but struggle

against the crippling G-forces.

The aircraft is plunging towards the snowy earth,

and there's nothing anyone can do.

Everyone on board now feels the force

of the plane's dramatic movements.

This plane is in a serious crisis.

But captain Danilov can't get to the cockpit.

He, too, is squashed by the powerful forces

created by the plane's extreme bank.

The plane still isn't responding.

To add to their confusion, an alarm begins to sound:

It signals the complete shutdown of the autopilot.

The plane is now completely in the hands of Piskarev...

And Eldar.

And to make matters even worse, there's another alarm.

Piskarev: The other way! The other way!

Narrator: The plane is about to stall.

Piskarev: To the left!

Narrator: An automatic safety system kicks in

to keep the plane flying.

It lowers the nose

and puts the airbus into a steep dive

to regain speed.

Piskarev: To the left! There's the ground!

Narrator: The plane dives at a frightening 40,000 feet per minute.

For the people on board,

it's like having an elevator fall out from under them.

Yana: Daddy!

Narrator: In just seconds, the heavy pressure

of the high-speed turn

is replaced by near weightlessness.

As the plane suddenly drops away,

it's now a very dangerous environment.

People and objects that are not secured

will land anywhere once gravity returns.

They'd been flying at 33,000 feet,

but now they're falling fast.

Unless they do something quickly,

they will hit the ground in less than a minute.

Piskarev pulls back on the control column

as hard as he can

to bring the airbus out of the dive.

The nose finally comes up,

and the aircraft begins climbing quickly.

Gravity returns with a shock.

As the plane climbs,

the rapid acceleration pushes people down relentlessly.

The dramatic change in speed

makes everyone feel four times heavier than normal.

Meanwhile, first officer Piskarev

is still trying to regain control of the aircraft.

Piskarev: Thrust levers to slow!

Narrator: Piskarev has pulled the airplane out of the dive...

But it's climbing too quickly.

The engines on the A 310 don't have enough power

to push it almost vertically into the sky.

The airspeed drops dramatically.

The plane strains to climb, but it's been pushed too far.

As the force of the acceleration eases,

Kudrinsky leaps into action.

But Piskarev has stalled the plane.

The nose drops into a corkscrew dive.

Now the airbus is twisting towards the ground

from 19,000 feet at over 230 feet a second.

Piskarev: Full throttle!

Narrator: For the first time since the crisis began,

captain and co-pilot can finally work together to save the plane.

Piskarev: Full throttle, no?

Kudrinsky: I got it, I have full throttle!

Narrator: Kudrinsky pumps the rudder,

the vertical surface on the tail,

to help break out of the spin.

Kudrinsky: What's the speed?

Piskarev: I don't see it.

Narrator: At last, the plane seems to be responding.

By working the rudder,

Kudrinsky has nearly stopped the corkscrew dive.

Piskarev: Coming out, coming out...

Too much speed, ease back on throttle a bit!

Narrator: After a desperate struggle, the two pilots have managed

to pull the plane out of its terrifying spin.

Piskarev: Take it easy.

Narrator: They're starting to level out,

but still not completely in control.

Kudrinsky: We'll get out of this...

Everything is fine...

Easy. Pull backwards a little bit.

Narrator: In all of the chaos of the past few minutes,

the pilots don't know exactly how far they've fallen.

Suddenly they run out of time.

Controller: Sierra uniform 593,

this is Novokuznetsk area control.

Please come in.

Narrator: 310 miles north of the Mongolian border,

air traffic controllers in Novokuznetsk

wait for flight 593 to radio

that it's left their control area.

Controller: ...area control, please come in.

Narrator: Less than two hours later,

the first search party goes out to look for the airbus

in the frozen, rugged Siberian wilderness.

They finally locate the remains of flight 593

on a wooded hillside

about 60 miles east of Novokuznetsk.

It's soon clear there are no survivors

among the 75 passengers and crew.

This was a brand-new aircraft,

fitted with the latest technology.

What could have brought it down?

Why was there no warning, not even a distress signal?

The Russian media are quick to speculate:

Could it have been a terrorist bomb?

Barrie Deaville: When I was in Moscow, the news we had,

that it could have been a terrorist act.

Because we had terrorist acts on aircraft previously.

We was completely unaware, other than nobody'd survived it.

Narrator: Aeroflot flies the families of the deceased out to Moscow.

Among them is Brenda Clark,

the mother of British passenger mark Newport.

Clark: We met my daughter-in-law there.

They told us, you know,

it's cordoned off, we can't go down there.

And she said you can go down there, Brenda,

because the Chinese are down there:

They have to do rituals and things.

Narrator: The authorities take them to where the plane crashed.

Relatives of Chinese victims

drop pieces of paper with messages written on them.

Others throw flowers.

Clark: Yeah, that was really moving.

We had the flowers, they had the little...

The little, they wrote messages, I think,

on these pieces of paper.

And they threw them out.

It was lovely. Yeah.

Narrator: The Russians take the families to a morgue

in a town near the crash site,

where the recovered bodies are being held.

Many are too badly mutilated to be identified.

They ask the families to look at recovered bits of clothing

to help identify the bodies.

Brenda Clark finds her son's family photographs.

She is shaken.

For the first time she knows for certain

he was on the flight.

The recovery operation gets under way.

The Russian government mobilizes 238 soldiers,

police, investigators and rescuers.

Everyone in the aviation world wants to know

how a brand-new state-of-the-art airbus

could fall out of the sky without any warning.

Does the A 310 have problems no one knows about?

They need to find out fast.

Chief accident investigator Ivan Mashkivsky is in charge.

The crash site itself offers few clues.

The ones he does have are puzzling.

Unbroken bottles of champagne,

a flight attendant in an oxygen mask,

and finally, the body of at least one child

in the cockpit.

The plane's digital flight data recorder

indicates the engines were running when it hit the ground.

He rules out engine failure.

Mashkivsky needs the expertise

of a man who knows the A 310 well,

someone who can also recreate the fatal flight

and find out exactly what went wrong.

Vladimir Biriukov is an experienced test pilot

and crash investigator at the Gromov institute in Moscow.

He's an expert on the A 310 airbus.

Biriukov was directly involved

in testing and certifying the airplane

prior to the Russians buying it.

Vladimir Biriukov, translated: Because of the fate of this plane,

the fate of this airline, my first reaction was shock.

How could such a thing happen?

All I knew was that the plane

had crashed somewhere over Siberia.

I remember spending a sleepless night, distraught,

and trying to figure out what might have happened

and what could have caused it.

Ivan Mashkivsky: Yeah, come.

Biriukov: I think you should come and listen to this.

Narrator: Each investigation begins with a complete analysis

of the plane's cockpit voice recorder.

This time it reveals something disturbing.

Kudrinsky: Now, come and sit in my seat.

Would you like to?

Come.

Yana: Daddy, can I turn this?

Kudrinsky: Yeah.

Biriukov: Kudrinsky was in the pilot's seat, wasn't he?

Mashkivsky: According to the diagram.

Eldar: Can I turn this a bit?

Kudrinsky: Yeah.

But if you turn it to the left, where will the plane go?

Eldar: Left.

Kudrinsky: Right. Look out...

Mashkivsky: No.

Again.

Eldar: Can I turn this a bit?

Kudrinsky: Yeah.

But if you turn it to the left, where will the plane go?

Nigel Taylor: Ten years ago it wasn't unusual

for people to be invited up to the cockpit.

Of course since 9/11 it's become a lot tighter,

and you will find cockpit doors are locked generally

throughout the flight.

Feith: Every country sets its own rules

as to who has the authority or the access to the cockpit.

In some countries it's up to the captain,

so the captain can invite guests up to the cockpit.

But to have them actually manipulating

the controls of an airplane,

regardless of whether they have people on it or not,

the fact that this was allowed to occur

is definitely an exception in the industry.

Yana: Dad, can I go back to my seat?

Narrator: The two investigators are stunned by what they hear

on the cockpit voice recorder.

Mashkivsky: It's unbelievable!

These two youngsters, the ones who we couldn't identify,

they were not thrown into the cockpit by the crash.

They were his kids!

Biriukov: And they were flying the plane.

Narrator: The investigators are speechless.

How could three experienced pilots

allow children to fly a commercial airliner?

They're about to learn something even worse:

The children were only part of the problem.

A little known feature of the plane proved deadly.

Eldar: Why is it turning?

Kudrinsky: Is it turning by itself?

Makarov: Turn it to the left!

Kudrinsky: The other way!

Piskarev: The other way!

Eldar: I am turning it left!

Kudrinsky: Ok, get out!

Come on, get out! Get out!

Piskarev: Get it left, the ground is right there!

Narrator: Russian investigators listen to the cockpit voice recorder

of the Aeroflot airbus that crashed in Siberia.

Piskarev: Full throttle!

Narrator: What they hear makes their blood run cold.

Piskarev: Full throttle!

Kudrinsky: I got it. I have full throttle!

Piskarev: Full throttle, no?

Biriukov: You should understand the frame of mind of the father.

He is very proud of what he's doing.

He invites his kids into the cockpit.

Strictly speaking, it's a violation, of course,

but I know such violations

do occur in real life.

I'm not condemning him

or defending him here.

What I'm trying to say

is that no disaster occurs for just any single reason.

There's always more than one, all coming together.

Narrator: But this time it really does look like a single cause--

a child flying the plane.

And it sends shock waves through Aeroflot's higher echelons.

Mashkivsky: No, I think it would benefit the...

Narrator: Investigators feel the pressure.

The media has learned that Eldar was at the controls.

Aeroflot, trying to improve on its soviet-era image,

wants to minimize the damage.

Boris Rybak is an aerospace consultant in Moscow.

Rybak: Aeroflot managers and executives

indeed tried to conceal results

and tried to downplay the importance of this accident

because it was very embarrassing.

Narrator: Managers at Aeroflot

aren't the only ones following the investigation.

Airbus, the European company which made the plane,

is also intensely interested.

Biriukov: Ivan Efremovich.

What's wrong?

Mashkivsky: Nothing, nothing.

Narrator: If the accident was caused by Eldar,

it will vindicate airbus.

At the same time,

grieving families are also clamoring for answers.

Biriukov: Are you sure?

Narrator: For Mashkivsky and his team,

it's a delicate balance.

Mashkivsky: There is always more than one reason

for a plane to crash.

We must find it.

Biriukov: I'll do my best.

Narrator: His reputation, the reputation of airbus,

as well as Aeroflot,

all now depend on finding this other cause.

Taylor: This was an international flight.

It was a western-built aircraft,

and it was inevitable that the investigation

that would be conducted by the authorities

and the inquiries that would be conducted by claimant lawyers

would expose information.

Rybak: At the same time,

manufacturer of the aircraft, Airbus Industrie,

was very keen to get as much realistic explanation

of what happened

because reputation of this aircraft was at stake.

Narrator: Vladimir Biriukov continues trying to learn all he can

about why the airbus fell out of the sky.

Analyzing information from the flight data recorder,

he can trace and repeat

every command given to the aircraft

during the flight.

Biriukov: We were trying to get

as close to the truth as possible,

to find the cause,

because that was the precedent:

The first foreign-produced plane to crash

while flying for a Russian airline.

Narrator: The investigation confirms the autopilot was on

when the plane got into trouble.

Even with the children in the cockpit,

the plane should have flown on course.

What went so terribly wrong?

Mashkivsky: So, any new developments?

Biriukov: We can discount Kudrinsky's daughter.

She sat in the chair, but she didn't fly the plane.

At 17:47 and 6 seconds

captain Kudrinsky tells her not to touch the autopilot switch.

Narrator: Her father gave the autopilot the command to turn,

while Yana just rested her hands lightly on the controls.

Yana: It was you! You turned the plane!

Narrator: But when Eldar took the controls,

Biriukov discovers

that something dramatically different happened.

No one could possibly have guessed--

not even the three pilots in the cockpit.

Biriukov may have found the key to the puzzle.

The plane's flight data recorder

shows that two and a half minutes before the crash,

while Eldar was still at the controls,

the autopilot partially disconnects.

This is the start of all the plane's troubles.

But how did that happen?

The autopilot is a sophisticated computer

which manages an airplane's speed, altitude and heading.

Altitude and heading are controlled

by three key functions:

The rudder, which controls sideways movement;

the elevators, which control vertical movement;

and the ailerons, which are for turning.

On flight 593, the autopilot

had disconnected itself from the ailerons.

Feith: The autopilots that were used

in transport airplanes years ago were an on/off.

In today's sophisticated flight management systems,

you can literally take fragments of the autopilot

and disengage them,

but not necessarily turn the switch off

and turn it all off, unless you want to.

Narrator: The question that really worries accident investigator Biriukov

is how did the autopilot become partially disconnected?

There is no mention of it in the cockpit voice recordings.

If this is a problem with the aircraft,

it could prove fatal for future flights.

The only way to know for certain is to reconstruct the accident

on a flight simulator at Airbus Industrie's headquarters

in Toulouse, France.

Biriukov's experience as a test pilot

and his detailed knowledge of the A 310

are crucial to the investigation.

Using information from the flight data recorder,

Biriukov reconstructs the events,

beginning at the moment captain Kudrinsky allows his son

to sit at the controls.

A co-pilot will help replicate Piskarev's actions.

Kudrinsky: Look out to the left,

watching for the ground when we're turning.

Narrator: Unlike his sister, Eldar turns the wheel

before his father can tell the autopilot to turn the plane.

The controls are stiff because he is fighting the autopilot.

In the simulator,

Biriukov replicates Eldar's every movement.

Biriukov: Now...

It's starting to go...

Going...

Going...

There.

Hold it long enough, and it disconnects.

Co-pilot: How long?

Biriukov: 30 seconds.

And it disconnects smoothly.

Co-pilot: No warning.

Biriukov: No.

No.

Narrator: No one in the cockpit knows it,

but this is the critical moment.

Eldar's resistance actually turns part of the autopilot off.

It takes just half a minute, but from here on,

Eldar is controlling the ailerons,

Eldar is actually steering the plane.

Kudrinsky: Is it turning by itself?

Eldar: Yes, it is.

Narrator: What seemed like an open and shut case

is suddenly much more complex.

Kudrinsky: To the left!

Piskarev: The other way!

Narrator: The 15-year-old flying the plane

isn't the only reason they crashed.

The discovery highlights an apparent flaw

in how pilots are trained on the A 310.

Kudrinsky: I got it! I have full throttle!

Narrator: Accident investigator Vladimir Biriukov

has finally discovered the terrifying sequence of events

that made Aeroflot's flight 593 fall to earth.

Captain Kudrinsky's 15-year-old son

had turned the plane's control column

against the programmed flight settings.

This disconnected the autopilot, without warning,

from the ailerons, which turn the plane.

Biriukov: Hold it long enough, and it disconnects.

Co-pilot: How long?

Narrator: The aircraft then began

an uncontrolled turn to the right,

which got steeper and steeper.

But why didn't anyone realize

the autopilot had been disconnected?

The A 310 airbus has only a small light

to tell the crew the autopilot has disconnected.

There's no alarm.

And the Russian crew was obviously unaware of it.

But there's also another reason

why no one realized what was happening.

The autopilot still appears to be working normally

because it's controlling the plane's other functions.

Although the plane is now banking,

the situation isn't yet critical.

At this point, if the crew takes the proper action,

they can still stabilize the plane.

Eldar is the first to notice

that the artificial horizon is at an angle.

Eldar: Why is it turning?

Kudrinsky: Is it turning by itself?

Eldar: Yes, it is!

Narrator: The three pilots don't understand this at all.

After all, Kudrinsky returned the flight

to its autopilot heading.

Makarov: Still turning.

Narrator: Makarov offers an explanation.

Makarov: Going into some kind of zone.

Piskarev: We've gone into a zone, a holding pattern.

Kudrinsky: Have we?

Piskarev: Of course we have!

Biriukov: Increasing...

One degree per second...

27 degrees...

Now, we should be entering into the zone.

Co-pilot: What's that?

Narrator: A strange arc now appears on the navigation panel.

It looks like the course a plane would take

circling an airport, waiting to land.

Biriukov: There appeared an arc very much resembling the arc

that appears on the display when a plane enters a waiting zone.

There are waiting zones around airports.

When too many planes accumulate, they enter such a zone

and circle around while they wait.

But there could be no such zone at that point on the route,

and yet we hear in the voice recording,

"Hey, we're entering a zone!"

Narrator: This false holding zone

distracts the crew for nine seconds.

In that time the plane crosses a critical threshold.

The airbus is now banking at 45 degrees,

far beyond its design limits.

It cannot turn this steeply and maintain height.

It's now losing altitude.

Makarov: Guys!

Narrator: But the airbus autopilot

is no longer controlling the ailerons.

Its other functions try to compensate

by pulling the plane's nose up

and increasing power to maintain altitude.

Passengers are pushed back into their seats.

It's on the verge of stalling.

It starts to shake like a leaf.

Kudrinsky: Hold it! Just hold it!

Narrator: Part of the flight control panel now goes dark.

It's a warning sign

that the plane has gone beyond its design limits.

From here on, the airbus is out of control.

Biriukov: It was zone, a holding pattern.

Narrator: By recreating the fatal flight, Biriukov has worked out

how a lapse in judgment and concentration

has resulted in a catastrophic crisis.

But could the crew have saved the plane and its passengers?

The pilots of flight 593

tried to bring the plane out of its fatal dive

by pulling up,

but they go too far.

The plane climbs steeply and stalls.

Co-pilot: We're losing altitude!

Biriukov: Now we've started to spin.

So what do we do?

Co-pilot: It's coming out of the corkscrew.

Biriukov: Now we're leveling out.

In a moment we'll come out of the dive.

Narrator: All they had to do was let go.

Biriukov: See?

Narrator: The plane has a built-in survival mechanism

which won't allow it to stall, even at very low speed.

But the pilot has to know that.

Biriukov: But the situation is totally new to them,

something they weren't accustomed to handling.

A stressful and incomprehensible situation.

It would have taken special skills

to act correctly in such a difficult situation.

It was not the crew's fault but their misfortune,

because if a person doesn't know how to do something

because he was never taught to, you can't really blame him.

Narrator: The team's perseverance in an open and honest investigation

showed that there was more than one simple cause

behind the accident.

Their findings benefited the whole industry,

especially the revelation

that the autopilot can partially disconnect.

This remains a feature of the A 310,

as it enables pilots to control certain elements of a flight

while leaving the rest to the computer.

But crews are now made aware of this.

Captain Kudrinsky's misfortune was that it was triggered

in a way that was unexpected and difficult to detect.

The crash of the Russian plane

comes at a troubling time for the airline industry.

In 1994, the same year that flight 593 went down,

a series of crashes in the united states

raised questions about how commercial pilots

handle "upsets"--

situations in which an aircraft

finds itself in extreme flying conditions.

Feith: When we think about upset in a large airplane,

we think about an attitude of the airplane

that's beyond what normal flight regimes would be.

That is greater than 20 degrees nose up,

greater than 10 degrees nose down,

and bank angles greater than 25 degrees.

Narrator: Within a year, the industry

had begun offering pilots upset recovery training,

teaching them skills to handle extreme situations

like the one on flight 593.

The tragedy of one trip to Hong Kong

may have contributed something

to the safety of other passengers and crews.

For parents and friends of those on board, though,

what happened that night is never far from their minds.

Adrian Deaville's body

was one of 22 that were never identified.

Their remains were cremated together

by the Russian authorities.

The crew of the airbus is buried in Mitinskoe cemetery in Moscow,

in a hero's grave,

next to the firefighters

who died at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

Yana and Eldar lie next to their father.

Victoria: I can imagine the horror they experienced

in their last moments.

He knew there were not only all those people depending on him,

but also his own kids!

Barry Deaville: I can forgive the pilot.

I can forgive the children, because they were innocent.

This man was 39 years old,

and for those 39 years he had

an exemplary flying career.

He had a family, and he was proud of them,

and it was the final 5 minutes of those 39 years

that went awry.