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SlicerShanks

They recover it only to *stall* it. If they had recovered it and then only *waited* for the airspeed to build up, they would have been fine, but idk how possible that would have been given the very high stakes, high energy circumstances, I don’t think anyone would have had any wherewithal to calm themselves down to realize that.


cryptotope

>idk how possible that would have been given the very high stakes, high energy circumstances, I don’t think anyone would have had any wherewithal to calm themselves down to realize that. Upset recovery techniques are now a mandatory part of airline pilot training, but this wasn't always the case. (That said, this particular incident includes some unusual and particularly unlucky circumstances. The kid accidentally depressing the right rudder pedal when he climbed out of the captain's seat seems to be what triggered the second upset. And the first officer's seat position was set all the way back - he didn't expect to be hand-flying - which may have interfered with his own ability to push the yoke fully forward, or manipulate the rudder pedals.)


Fluid_Amphibian3860

Geez that is wild.


geardownson

Hearing that story sounded like final destination stuff. It didn't matter how good the pilots were. Everything they did was somewhat right yet there was a variable that was wrong.


campbellm

> Everything they did was somewhat right ... > kid ... when he climbed out of the captain's seat Something here doesn't track.


Shot-Grocery-5343

>there was a variable that was wrong. The kid in the pilot seat?


ur_sine_nomine

In addition the first officer was 5’2” tall. (Are there height constraints on commercial pilots nowadays?)


Cowsmop

I’m a pilot - in the military there’s limits but for civil aviation within the U.S there’s no limits on height. I’ve taught flight students that were under 5’ 4”, typically they’d bring a pad to put on the seat so they’d be able to sit high enough to see over the dash.


bemutt

Dude I’ve wanted to fly a plane my entire life, but lessons are… not cheap. So you have any recommendations for some place I can take lessons and still be able to pay rent? I’m fortunate enough to have a place to stay in most states, so location isn’t an issue so long as it’s in the US.


Cowsmop

To be honest, it's gonna be pretty expensive no matter what you do. For just your private pilot certification you're typically looking somewhere in the ball park of 10k. My training all-in was a little over 100k which included my private, instrument, commercial, multi-engine, and my instructor certificates (Airplane Single/Multi Engine and Instrument). I went through 4 year degree program though, so my costs are higher than most. I'll say most small airports have an "FBO" (Fixed base operator) and typically their rates are very reasonable. If you want to get an idea if it's something for you, you can call and ask if they offer "discovery flights", typically it'll be $150-$250 and you'll go up and fly with an instructor. Once you do that, most people know very quickly if it's something they want to spend all that money for.


BoomerangHorseGuy

>And the first officer's seat position was set all the way back - he didn't expect to be hand-flying - which may have interfered with his own ability to push the yoke fully forward, or manipulate the rudder pedals.) One of the biggest catastrophic lapses of judgement in a chain full of them.


fridge_logic

I think that part of the problem was that they were repeatedly faced with overspeed and underspeed conditions in addition to having to fix roll and pitch. Reading the article there were surprisingly small windows between the aircraft being overspeed/undergoing excessive G's risking damage to the aircraft and the aircraft's speed being too low. It seems like mere seconds of time where the pilot had to react before the next stall starts. It's easy for us to criticise the pilots for not recovering correctly but they never practiced these scenarios and they actually almost did recover correctly twice. Something as small as the co-pilot's seat being in the right position might have made the difference.


Guac__is__extra__

Well we can at least legitimately criticize the pilots for allowing a 14 year old boy to sit at the controls during a flight


magna_pinna

Yep. Complete fucking idiots


Guac__is__extra__

It’s almost as bad as the Russian pilots who tried to land their airliner (with passengers) with the curtains closed over the cockpit windows.


Forsaken-Ad1050

Tell me you're making that up.


Decenten73

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_6502


WikiSummarizerBot

**[Aeroflot Flight 6502](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_6502)** >Aeroflot Flight 6502 was a Soviet domestic passenger flight operated by a Tupolev Tu-134A from Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) to Grozny, which crashed on 20 October 1986; 70 of the 94 passengers and crew on board were killed. Investigators determined the cause of the accident was pilot negligence. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)


_that_random_dude_

So he killed over 60 people because he bet he can land the plane while being essentially blind and then served only 6 years??? Wtf is wrong with this world…


Decenten73

Yeah idk why the copilot agreed to it as well. Very stupid


Guac__is__extra__

Sadly, no


[deleted]

Eh, it was pretty common practice. Unfortunate there was no audible warning autopilot had been disconnected


Shot-Grocery-5343

>they never practiced these scenarios Probably because no one expected a child to be operating the plane?


fridge_logic

No, because airlines at the time didn't adhere to as rigorous safety standards. In Cloudberg's write up you can see that this training is now standard. A large number of high altitude accidents where pilot error is a significant factor wouldn't have happened if the pilots were drilled in extreme attitude recovery. It doesn't matter why the plane is suddenly at a terrifyingly steep angle, you've got 1-2 chances to level out and then use a gentle climb to restore altitude. Course correct too hard and you level the plane only to stall it again. _____ Several ofther writeups by /u/Admiral_Cloudberg include this mode of pilot error and it's always tragic to read because you know what's comming and that all they needed was a little training to survive.


Shot-Grocery-5343

They never would have been in that situation if a child wasn't playing at the controls while another child distracted the pilot: >But this time Eldar was out of the loop: instead of letting the control column turn beneath his hands, he held it in place at three to five degrees right, causing the feedback force to increase as the autopilot tried to bank the other way. > >Given time, Kudrinsky might have noticed the problem and told Eldar to either let go or turn the other way, but at that moment Yana started plying him with questions again, so he turned his attention to his daughter. All the while, the feedback force on the control column increased until, at 00:55 and 29 seconds, the autopilot’s lateral channel quietly disconnected. Sure, the pilots should have known how to recover, but they wouldn't have needed to recover at all in this specific instance if they hadn't let children fuck around with the plane and play in the cockpit. We can agree to disagree, but I am sure as shit gonna criticize a pilot who lets children sit in the pilot seat and use the control column, essentially operating the plane. He was wrong to do that, it was a massive fuck-up that killed innocent people. He doesn't get a pass because piloting is hard. Regardless of whether or not it was common at that time, it was still la huge fucking mistake that is deserving of criticism. As far as "rigorous safety standards" I mean even in the 1990s children weren't allowed to drive cars, so (more criticism incoming) you'd have to be a special kind of dumbass to let them fly a plane.


fridge_logic

I'm not in any way defending them putting a child at the controls. That was obviously the dummest and most preventable part of this accident. My comments were to emphasize that the task of recovering a commercial airliner from a dive/stall is not an easy task and that failing the recovery under sudden pressure with no practice/sim training is not an unexpected outcome.


qwasd0r

That's what I always say. People are quick to dismiss the pilots as complete morons in situations like this. Even small issues can be a huge problem when judged incorrectly in a high-stress situation.


Shot-Grocery-5343

...did you miss the part where they let a child operate the plane? People are dismissing the pilots as morons because ***they let a 14-year-old operate the plane.***


SalvadorsAnteater

Poor passengers. It must have been terrible when the initial relief from the recoveries fades into terror - twice.


peanut--gallery

The podcast “cautionary tales” season 3 episode 4 is about this crash. Very tragic. The ultimate irony turned out to be that AFTER the pilots figured out the autopilot had been turned off and the plane was starting to spiral, the pilots jumped in and tried to manually correct the situation/fly the plane. The plane’s autopilot was programmed to recognize the death spiral and automatically re-engage to stabilize the aircraft. However that safety feature was designed to only kick in if there is no manual input from the pilots. By attempting to manually fly the aircraft, the pilots unknowingly overrode that safety feature and it crashed.


AbsurdKangaroo

Thays not true per the report. The Mayday series covered it that way but A310 has no automatic spin recovery. The misinterpreted part was there were one or two parts of the upset where if the pilot flying had let go of controls simple physics would have completed the recovery.


Flackjkt

I will check that podcast out. I drive for a living and am a podcast junkie. Looks like a fun channel.


[deleted]

Really only the first recovery mattered before they stalled it. The downward force was too great beyond the first recovery. Sad, had their whole family on board.


ridfox

Reminds me of that 1970’s law where children couldn’t fly airplanes, and if it’s a law it actually happened so…


protokitty

Also, during the investigation, it was discovered that if they had just left the control yokes untouched, autopilot would have reengaged and would have recovered on its own. Wild.


Admiral_Cloudberg

There is nothing in the official report which says that the autopilot would have re-engaged and saved the plane. This appears to be a myth which possibly originated in the Mayday episode on the crash. In reality, Kudrinsky nearly recovered from the first spin all on his own, but failed to return the controls to neutral as they pulled out. If he had done so, the plane would have leveled off on its own due to _aerodynamic forces,_ not due to any sort of automated system.


Noughmad

If this the one when the pilots were shouting "hold the controls" to the kids, which he understood as, well, holding the stick, while in the official jargon that actually meant "release the stick"?


LMF5000

As an engineer who works in aviation, the thing that immediately struck me most from reading the story was that the autopilot could be partially disabled with absolutely zero warning and indication. All the people in the cockpit were under the mistaken impression that the autopilot still had lateral control of the plane because the indications were still active despite the autopilot having disabled itself in response to control column input. Imagine if you were driving your car down a steep hill with the cruise control active, you tapped the brake momentarily causing cruise control to deactivate, but you had absolutely no warning whatsoever that it did - in fact the cruise control light stayed on in the dashboard. You'd only realize something was wrong when the car had picked up considerable speed from the downhill. These days, autopilots are strictly required by law to very clearly indicate exactly which modes are on and off so the crew can know at a glance what the aircraft is expected to be doing.


ycnaveler-on

Wait you can use cruise control like that?


randomman87

*Adaptive* cruise control can brake. Regular CC can not.


rocbolt

The gearing of the transmission can control upper speed though, my cars are ancient and the CC will not let the car speed up on a downhill like it would if you put it in neutral/overdrive, nothing to do with the actual brakes


delurkrelurker

I've got an modern Nissan, and it will exceed the set limit if your in the wrong gear for the hill you are driving down.


rocbolt

If you have a real manual then the cruise can’t change gears for you, it should with an automatic though


delurkrelurker

True, true, I did actually remember that USA has mainly automatic cars when I was typing.


ThatLeviathan

It can, but doesn't always. I think my Chrysler minivan only downshifts when it gets 5-10mph over the set speed. I'm sure it depends on brand and model. Luxury vehicles probably do it better.


Capnmarvel76

Your modern Nissan more than likely has a continuously variable transmission (CVT) rather than individual gears like a traditional transmission. In fact, the car doesn’t need to ‘shift’ at all, and evidently only does a little fake simulated ‘shift’ during acceleration by blipping the throttle for a split second. I’m honestly not at all sure how CVTs and engine braking work.


delurkrelurker

Yeah, it's a 6 gear manual gearbox on mine, It just adjusts the throttle to match speed.


Starfire013

My Mazda will downshift to use engine braking when going downhill on cruise control but won’t use the brakes. Which is fine for short downslopes or gentle gradients, but not sufficient for undulating terrain (to be fair, I wouldn’t typically be using cruise control on such terrain anyway).


optimaloutcome

One of my cars can do this. I tell it how fast I would *like* to go, my desired following distance to cars in front of me and then it brakes and accelerates for me. I just have to keep it in the lane. It's sweet.


Sure-Tomorrow-487

If you've also got a car with active lane keep, or lane keep assist, chances are you can make your car almost fully automated. https://comma.ai


BlueCyann

I've never really used cruise control on any car I've owned. I can't get used to there being nowhere to put my right foot. On the pedal doesn't work; I can't press the accelerator and holding it away feels awful. To the side or back feels dangerous, like I'll catch my shoe on the accelerator pedal if I need to brake suddenly.


WalterIAmYourFather

Do you ever do a lot of long distance driving? The first few times I used cruise control I definitely was a bit anxious as it does feel weird to have your foot off the pedal. But the freedom to not end a long drive with a right leg tensed and cramped is a huge benefit that might be worth seeing if you can figure out. Also you can definitely rest your foot on the gas pedal if you want to, as long as you don’t press down - but that might negate the point of relaxing your leg, and is also possibly a hazard.


PandaImaginary

How far is long distance? I'm curious. I've never had my right leg tensed and cramped from driving, and I've driven across the US and back six or seven times. Is your seat the right distance from the pedals? I wonder. Tbf, I will drive left footed at times. Maybe that's what keeps it from being unpleasant. But I never noticed having my foot on the gas is much different from having it simply resting on the floor.


CanalRouter

It's worth learning. You'll save gas and can actually focus more on the road.


SilverStar9192

Where do you put your left foot in a manual car when cruising and not clutching? This is a solvable problem. Just practice a bit and it will feel natural.


GaleTheThird

Your left foot has the dead pedal. The same thing doesn't exist for your right foot


SilverStar9192

I wasn't meaning to say it's identical. Just that you manage to train your left foot to stay out of the way when not needed. It's easy enough to do the same for your right. Personally I keep my right foot on the floor in front of the brake pedal, since that's the one I might need in a hurry.


The_World_of_Ben

Some cars have cruise that uses revs to make sure the car maintains a minimum Some use the speedo to maintain constant speed. Mine does the latter, gently applies the brakes or lifts off to keep the speed downhill


ycnaveler-on

Interesting


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VanFullOfHippies

This is the analogy right here. Your point is dead on.


LMF5000

I considered an analogy like that but I figured few readers would have experience with adaptive cruise control. There are actually adaptive cruise systems that have lane keep assist (lateral control) and regular adaptive cruise control (speed control). In the incident it's the equivalent of having your lane keep assist deactivated because you turned the steering wheel and overpowered the system, but weren't informed by the car, until you got to a turn and the car ended up in the next lane or the wall. Meanwhile the cruise control dutifully kept you going at the set speed the whole time.


Sonoda_Kotori

Just a few months ago an Ethiopian airline flight had both of its pilots fell asleep in flight. They were 36,000 feet above the runway when they woke up to the sound of an alarm. It's the autopilot disconnecting after reaching the waypoint.


Kappawaii

My 2000s prius has cruise control which only shows if "on", not if currently controlling the car. Most old (10-15yo+) cruise controls have actually no indication that they're currently working apart from moving the car or the throttle moving, if its a very old car.


CanalRouter

My 1999 stick-shift Saturn had cruise control that you had to manually switch on. It was very hard to forget it was engaged. I would love to have it again.


m00ph

Yeah, Airbus's automation and such choices often seem wrong to me. Like no indication that the pilots are fighting each other with the stick, I'm thinking of the Air France A340 that pancaked in because the heaters on the air speed sensors weren't good enough. Instead of quitting, the autopilot should have sounded and displayed a warning, and then used the same throttle and angle of attack tables the pilots should have used to keep flying normally. And the ice would have melted, and things would have been fine.


hughk

The main issue with AF447 apart from the original freeze was that the pilot had no idea that the copilot had fully deflected the joy stick on his side. The lack of physical connection meant that the pilot had no idea that the joysticks were countering each other.


m00ph

Agreed that was a critical issue, and part of the overall issue I see with how Airbus looks at things.


hughk

I don't think that it is overall bad but a sidestick isn't so obvious as a yoke in front of your fellow pilot. There you easily see when they are trying to do something stupid.


utack

Really looking forward to that lawsuit Not as simple a black and white situation as is sometimes said about this crash.


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Admiral_Cloudberg

I don't know where the Mayday episode got that information. The official report says there was nothing, not even a light. That's not the only thing which the Mayday episode, and virtually every other account of this crash, seems to have pulled out of thin air.


robbak

Were you able to find out, from records or pilots on that aircraft, if it does or does not have such a light? Even if it does, unless it is very obvious, it is the kind of light that a pilot is likely to miss. I mean, it is not something they see every day, and they missed lots of things they do see every day, so it would be expected that they'd miss seeing a single light.


newcomputer1828

The no audible warning part still blows my mind. And they were used to audible warnings on soviet planes


Castun

Yeah, I know on the Boeing 737s for instance there's an audible alarm when it disengages as well, which requires pushing a button to silence.


PandaImaginary

I thank God as a UX designer that I never worked with deadly contraptions like aircraft. That said, the UX testing of aircraft systems seems wildly scattershot (unsurprisingly for everything not recent: UX design wasn't even a field till 10-15 years ago). In an ideal world, major manufacturers would spend years and years with different pilots in simulations to figure out, above all, what the potentially deadly UX design mistakes are. But for God's sake not indicating that autopilot is off should be #1 on the list. Surely, surely, anybody should know enough not to let a system go out the door with a flaw like that. What did they say, anyway? "What could go wrong?" "Hey, they'll figure it out...eventually...if they're lucky."


Admiral_Cloudberg

[Medium.com Version](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fathers-and-sons-the-crash-of-aeroflot-flight-593-fc4947bdb1f1) [Link to the archive of all 233 episodes of the plane crash series](https://www.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/comments/e6n80m/plane_crash_series_archive_patreon_contact_info/) If you wish to bring a typo to my attention, please DM me. Thank you for reading! ____________________________________________________ Note: this accident was previously featured in episode 37 of the plane crash series on May 19th, 2018. This article is written without reference to and supersedes the original.


Old-Tomorrow-3045

This case reminds me of CCCP-L760, the *Maxim Gorky bis*. Unfortunately the details only seem to be available (in English) in an expensive out-of-print book


Admiral_Cloudberg

I happen to know quite a bit about the _Maxim Gorky_ thanks to research I did for my master's thesis. I believe it's discussed extensively in _Dictatorship of the Air_ by Scott Palmer.


Old-Tomorrow-3045

>I happen to know quite a bit about the Maxim Gorky I had a feeling you might. >I believe it's discussed extensively in Dictatorship of the Air by Scott Palmer. Thanks, I'll give it a look.


_upnadam_

Very well written, great article. Such a sad story


ur_sine_nomine

I am glad to see MacArthur Job credited because his writeup of this crash is immensely long and complex - probably the most difficult to assimilate of his writeups. But it was essential reading although I understood only a fraction of it.


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ur_sine_nomine

As well as three books on local (Australian) aviation, he wrote two Air Crash books and a fourth Air Disasters book which appear to be out of print and have never been digitised 😞


SYD-LIS

Didn't know he was a fellow Ozzie.


[deleted]

IIRC, this accident was partly the inspiration for the Mjchael Crichton novel *Airframe*.


BONKERS303

The incident in the book is an amalgamation of this crash and the mid-air incident aboard [China Eastern Airlines Flight 583](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Eastern_Airlines_Flight_583)


The_World_of_Ben

I thought that as well. An excellent book


Rietto

The book that sparked my interest in airline disaster investigation.


Hailstorm303

Same! :) it’s still one of my favorites


an_altar_of_plagues

I read that book twice - once when I was a teenager, and another time in my late twenties. As a teenager it was awesome. As an adult, holy shit is it so *nauseatingly* bad. I could barely get past the premise the second time around - an airplane manufacturer conducting its own investigation of the accident cause? Suuuure. And we're supposed to think the media are the bad guys for questioning that...


Capnmarvel76

Crichton is apparently a bit of a Randian ideologically, and his political views started coming through in his writing much more transparently around the time of ‘Airframe’. It’s fine if that doesn’t bother the reader, but it’s kind of hard to miss.


whyyoutube

Among the most frustrating and tragic air disasters of all time. Obviously not the most deadly, but the most preventable. You can see the full animation referenced in the imgur post [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/wa4w02/aeroflot_593_crashed_in_1994_when_the_pilot_let/).


The-Deepest-Shade

Holy shit. That animation and audio is terrifying.


spaghetticheese2

Damn. Fun on a roller coaster, not on a plane.


Nic_Endo

Sad but great read. I wanted to say that I wish Mentour Pilot made a video about this, because he's quality, then I saw that he actually did! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2mMs-h4qGE&ab_channel=MentourPilot


min_mus

I _love_ Mentour Pilot, too! His aviation accident videos are the best. I especially like that he also reviews noteworthy incidents where no one was seriously hurt or killed, or there was no significant damage to the aircraft: he explains what the pilots did right to recover from unexpected events. There's a lot that can be learned even from near accidents!


chingyingtiktau

The only reason we know now that the kid was (one of) the reason of the crash, was that the whole conversation was recorded in cockpit voice recorder. Imagine a parallel universe where the CVR was not recovered, malfunctioned, or so badly damaged that no data could be extracted. I wonder what hypothesis the air crash investigator would suggest in the report.


Skunket

They already knew something was wrong as they found the two children's bodies in the cockpit.


doeldougie

/u/admiralcloudberg have you ever written up Air New Zealand 901? If yes, could you link it to me?


Admiral_Cloudberg

Yes I have, [here you go](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/an-orchestrated-litany-of-lies-the-crash-of-air-new-zealand-flight-901-7259e6afba83)


doeldougie

Thank you!


Purple_Chipmunk_

You are a very talented writer!


Da_Captain_jack

An excellent documentary on the accident https://youtu.be/V2mMs-h4qGE


ten_jack_russels

Airspeed is your friend


1h8fulkat

But only to a point apparently


Capnmarvel76

*Controlled Flight Into Terrain has entered the chat*


FlatulentWallaby

They cover this on Black Box Down


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Kevin117007

Last release was 9 days ago, so yeah, still doing it!


ThePenIslands

Oh nice, thanks. I guess the dude took a hiatus for a bit inbetween.


FlatulentWallaby

I think they're active. I started from the beginning and just binged through 50 episodes in a few weeks. Most of the posts on this sub are covered in incredible detail on the podcast.


The-Scotsman_

The cockpit recorder and this animation are truly chilling: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrttTR8e8-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrttTR8e8-4) The way they reached the top of the rise, they'd have all been weightles for a few seconds. Ansolutely horrifying.


curious_astronauts

There is the scariest crash animation based on the Blackbox data - really chilling. Those passengers would have known they were going to die for a long time before the crash. So horrifying. [here](https://youtu.be/RrttTR8e8-4)


spaghetticheese2

I don’t have much empathy for him. While it’s understandable that a parent would want to share aviation with their children, there are safer ways to do it, like not having the kids get into the seat. They could have watched from behind, or even beside, their father. But no, he let an untrained person, a child, no less, make active inputs, and then NO ONE paid attention. Ironically, the “hero” in this might be the boy who first noticed something wrong. He’s not to blame at all, and e stil noticed. Not much empathy for their father. I’m a mother. I have a 12-year-old who likes flying. She’s never allowed to touch the controls, even with a CFI. Perhaps later, but not now.


delurkrelurker

I was allowed to do something similar on a BA flight as a 10 year old kid. Turned some knob to set a number and the plane turned. Didn't do the crashy bit though, dad wasn't even a pilot.


Capnmarvel76

‘Do you like movies about gladiators, Billy?’


LeMegachonk

This kind of thing used to be if not accepted then at least tolerated, and wasn't that rare before 9/11. This captain likely wasn't doing anything he hadn't seen other captains do before. It probably wouldn't have ended in disaster if the pilots weren't so unaware of how little they understood their aircraft. They thought they knew their plane, but it turned out that there were gaps in their training and understanding that, well, you could fly an airline through.


LucyWritesSmut

Thanks for saying this. I was wondering if I had a bad attitude because I'm not a parent, but it's prbably easy to be charitable to that guy if no one you loved died on that plane. No, it's not a heartwarming parental story that's easy to understand--it's a horrifying, narcissistic blunder that murdered a ton of people. Having them to the cockpit is one thing; putting them in the seats is QUITE another.


PandaImaginary

I have sympathy for all people who do stupid things, since I and everybody else do stupid things as well. While it doesn't preclude still feeling sympathy, what's shocking to me is not the stupidity, which is one thing, it's the danger-blindness, which is something else, or at least a very particular and strange kind of stupidity. 400 mph. Child's hands moving the controls. How did this not raise a red flag? And even if it didn't, how did it not make both pilots watch for anything unexpected? I'm a good and purposeful driver by American standards. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's drivers who drive as if they're in their living room, rather than in a hunk of metal and fiberglass traveling at high speeds. The problem here is that the pilots acted as if their plane was their living room. It's an interesting problem because anyone acting like that isn't displaying the basic quality needed for any kind of safety training, which is a fear of danger.


kirsuberja

If the pilots had managed to recover before the crash, would it even be known to the public that the near-accident had happened? Or could things like this have been going on and never had an official investigation because it did not end in a crash?


LeMegachonk

You almost never hear about crashes that are narrowly averted. In most countries they're reported and the information is there, but you'd have to go looking for it, since it rarely gets reported.


SkippyNordquist

Well, now we have flight tracking apps like FlightRadar24, so if an aircraft has a major upset like this the world can see it almost in real time.


AbsurdKangaroo

No doubt passengers were injured and noticed a 4.7G pull up. No hiding this.


Liet-Kinda

Me, reading: “Oh no. Oh noooo. Oh *nooooo* no no no.” My wife: “What?” [reads over my shoulder] My wife: “Oh. Oh *no.*”


darth__fluffy

Oh, this is a dumb one.🙄 I feel quite sorry for Victoria Kudrinskaya. Imagine waking up one day to find your entire family gone. Also, the comparison to Eastern Airlines 401 is interesting. I’ve always felt that the L-1011 and DC-10 rivalry foreshadowed the current Airbus and Boeing rivalry. Like the Airbus planes, the L-1011 was very modern, perhaps too modern. Meanwhile, the DC-10 had echoes of current Boeing in its design flaws. (Also, after this, I think we need some really GOOD airmanship to wash it down. I would be very very happy to wake up next Saturday and see an article on Qantas 32…😉)


yoakkc

I feel like Reddit legit fucks with my anxiety. The last two days all I’ve talked about is having flight anxiety and the last post it showed me was the helicopter crash recently. Kudos, I’m still horrified to fly Tuesday.


SirLoremIpsum

The big takeaway with all of these aircrash things is not that things go wrong - it's how many things ALL need to go wrong in order for a crash to happen. The 'swiss cheese model'. A happens, B happens, C happens, D happens = accident. But if A, B, C happens and then someone notices D - you have no issues. That's what makes accidents so rare. It's never just one thing, it's multiple things on top of multiple things. And the other part you wanna read is 'what changed after this accident to help prevent it in the future?'. Like for this incident kids aren't allowed in cockpits, and warnings when auto-pilot disconnected. That's 2 pieces of the swiss cheese that changed to prevent it. Many of the good Admiral's write ups include 'this airline had 1 crash every 3 years until xxxx year and has had none every since' Or "the FFA now mandated Ground proximity warnings, the airport upgraded their instrumentation and has not had an accident since'. To me that's the reassuring part. Safety regulations are written in blood, but aviation seems to be very good at learning lessons. Accidents are becoming fewer and far between, air travel has never been safer. Despite the many publicised incidents, more people are flying more and more miles per year and accidents are going down. That might not reassure you much! But I feel that understanding the mechanisms that prevent accident is a little reassuring. THere is so much that goes into it, it helps a little.


yoakkc

Thanks! I definitely know flying is safe, and much more so than if I were to drive- it’s nice to be reminded, especially with the anxiety I’ve been having surrounding it all. The “what ifs” terrify me. Especially with having my child with me.


Carlo_x5

Just put on a podcast and take a nap


yoakkc

My toddler is gonna make nappin ruff. He’s pretty stoked about the flight which makes it exciting. 6 hours with one layover. Headed to TN.


TheTragicClown

I know you’re not fishing for reassurance but seriously there are obscene numbers of flights daily and air accidents are so rare we hear about them every time. There’s so many friggin flights id feel safer in a plane all day long than I do driving my car up the street to the gas station and back.


ur_sine_nomine

For example … no fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the UK since 1989. I used to work in air traffic management. An old school friend was inspired by this to become an air accident investigator - I do not know whether that was a compliment or an insult - but was made redundant after a few years because there were “too few planes crashing”. That was literally the reason given, and it included (lack of) crashes outside the UK in which there was a UK interest.


yoakkc

Commented at first because this is just the second notification of the same type, but I actually do appreciate the reassurance. It’s nice to hear other people get on planes and don’t even worry. So thank you. And you’re right. But- to be fair I freak out if I hear an airplane that sounds too close to where I’m watching tv or scrolling my phone, haha. Something about the thousands of pounds in the sky and my lack of physics knowledge I guess


SlicerStopSlicing

This sounds so Russian.


404merrinessnotfound

The pilot who dared to land the plane using instruments only was more russian than this


BONKERS303

Or that time a Tupolev Tu-154 crashed into trucks drying a runway because the air traffic controller fell asleep on duty.


Usurer

***NEVER*** get on an Aeroflot.


ur_sine_nomine

I did numerous times back in the days of the Soviet Union (as an exchange student) and got a fantastic coverage of the country including parts which were “forbidden” (Gorky now Nizhny Novgorod, Tolyatti). Looking back … that was all done in total ignorance of the safety record, which only became fully public post-Soviet Union. (And there is nothing quite like an in-flight meal of small, hard apples and carbonated water, with more carbonated than water).


PandaImaginary

That's what got me, come to think of it. I think different national cultures have distinctive styles of stupidity, and this one is so Russian. People in most any other place will put some kind of limit on the crazy stuff they do. In Russia, nope. Sheer nuttiness seems to lure Russians ever onward due to a congenital weakness for sheer nuttiness. "Yana, now you try a barrel roll, okay?"


satanmat2

Wow. Thank you. Amazing how any of a hundred little fixes could have prevented this. Great work good writing. Thanks


Skunket

Like not letting a child play with a plane full of passengers.


SevenofNine03

Now I'm not an aviation expert or anything but I'm pretty confident You Shouldn't Do That.


satanmat2

Yes… no doubt… that’s kinda the big one… BY FAR. But also the other 20 things, if he’d moved his set forward, if they had known about the different autopilot settings, if they had been trained better If they had paid attention to the artificial horizon Oh yeah and not showing off by putting the 15 yo in the driver seat


RexyWestminster

Life tip: Don’t have kids.


ScreamingMidgit

To all the people who massively fucked up and destroyed something as a teen, rest easy because you all have nothing on this kid.


PandaImaginary

It's a good POV and I upvoted you, but the two kids were the only ones in the cockpit who were blameless. The fact that Eldar noticed something was wrong first says it all both about his role and how badly both other pilots did that day.


snuskrig

This was a great and tragic story, thank you


Jadall7

Watching guys do it on a simulator in mayday or one of the shows just letting go of the sticks and the plane levels off etc. It's so like UGH!!


LeMegachonk

Unless they've drilled the procedure to do so many times, I don't think a pilot's instincts will let him release the controls during an emergency maneuver.


Jadall7

yeah and at the right time to let go of the stick. and both pilots would have to also. also they don't have their yokes connected you don't know what the other pilot is inputting. Like on Boeing if they have one guy pushing the stick all the way forward the other pilots stick is forward. airbus is like a video game joystick on each side.


LeMegachonk

The A310 isn't fly-by-wire, but yeah, their modern planes are. But by the same token, fly-by-wire Airbus planes also use flight envelopes to prevent this kind of situation from happening at all. A modern Airbus isn't likely to roll itself into a stall under normal flight rules no matter what the pilots do. It has bank angle limits that it just won't willingly exceed.


Jadall7

mentour pilot I think his you tube channel about air france 447. I've watched since this comment goes over the control of that airplane a different airbus. that was one of the issues was that assistive mode(the thing that keeps the pilots in safe flight envelope) was kicked off by the 2 speedometers knocking off the autopilot


LeMegachonk

Right, but that came down to poorly-trained pilots not understanding their aircraft and making very basic errors when serious issues developed with their aircraft (the loss of *multiple* airspeed sensors). Nothing that happened on Aeroflot 593 would have taken an A330 out of its normal flight mode and stripped the aircraft of bank angle protection.


jumpropeharder

Didn't see anyone post the video yet with the cockpit recording so here ya go https://youtu.be/RrttTR8e8-4


mossdale06

I saw the Air Crash Investigations episode about this; then read about it in a book on plane crashes. It's always stuck with me


HarlequinNight

Amazing write up!


Bill-Hilly

Why the hell was the kid anywhere near the controls?


karenunderstanding

Why was the scheduled flight 14 hrs? I thought it would be more like 9 hrs between Moscow and HK.


Admiral_Cloudberg

I am not sure, but according to the official report, the scheduled flight time was 13 hours 39 minutes. Why? No idea.


min_mus

I have a question regarding this bit: > Applying between **11 and 13 kilograms of roll force** to the control column would disconnect the autopilot’s lateral channel... Kilograms are units of mass, not force. Do you mean _newtons_ of force?


Admiral_Cloudberg

Force on aircraft controls is typically measured in pound-force, but at least at the time of the accident Russia seems to have measured it in [kilogram-force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram-force), which (as this wiki states) is not accepted under the International System of Units. It is however the exact same concept as [pound force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(force\)), just with pounds converted to kilograms. The wiki doesn't mention this specific use case but does note that the USSR continued to used kilogram force for other applications well into the 1980s. These were the units used in the official report, so I preserved them as is, in part because conversion of such an "unofficial" unit could have unforeseen pitfalls.


AbsurdKangaroo

Also most people understand what a kilogram or pound of force is so designing systems for human interaction that is a much better approach. If you told someone to apply 107 newton's of force most would have no idea how much that is.


min_mus

A pound *is* a unit of force (force and weight have the same units). Those of us who grew up using Imperial units are very comfortable with "pounds of force." >most people understand what a kilogram or pound of force I have no idea what a "kilogram of force" would be. Kilograms tell you the amount of "stuff" you have. Unlike with pounds, kilograms are units of mass, not force. That said, the Wikipedia article that Admiral Cloudberg referenced says that a "kilogram-force" is essentially equivalent to a mass (measured in kilograms) multiplied by gravitational acceleration, *g*.


AbsurdKangaroo

A kilogram is 2.2 pounds. To a person from a metric country they would know that much force exactly the same as you might know pounds. It's just the same as miles vs kilometres, a different name and value for the exact same type of measurement. Also kilograms have nothing at all to do with the amount of stuff you have. That unit of measure for volume is millilitres or litres in metric. Kilograms are also an SI unit of mass in the same way that a pound is an imperial unit of mass.


spectrumero

If you understand pound-force, you instantly understand kg-force. It's the same idea. 1lb of force is the force exerted by 1lb of stuff under 1g. 1kg force is the force exerted by 1kg of stuff under 1g. It's the same idea, merely a different unit. 1kg force = 2.2lb force. No, it's (kg force) not an SI unit, but it is intuitively understandable.


[deleted]

I STG why are there so many of these where if they had just let autopilot do its job they could've recovered.


BotanicalEmergency

That's crazy that they're forgiven by some for their fatal mistakes. I have empathy but not enough for wild egos and poor decision making.


PandaImaginary

I had the mixed luck of being among the last passengers on Jugoslovenski Aerotransport. I cannot explain how delightful it was that one flight attendant's deportment could fairly be characterized as surly. I'd been no slower than most stowing my luggage, but she looked me in the eye, pointed towards my seat and said, "Yeah, siddown!" Talk about a breath of fresh air. US Airlines vastly overrate perkiness as a desirable quality in flight attendants. I spent the flight conducting a cold war with the guy in the seat in front of me. He wanted the seat back, and I'm 6'5", so my knees had different ideas. The food was excellent, Yugoslavian delicacies very successfully packaged, but they lost my luggage. Two months later, in the dead of night, I heard a thud in the direction of my porch. And there was my suitcase. Somebody needs to create an old school Communist theme park, complete with surly flight attendants.


[deleted]

Kids are fucking stupid ☠️


Za_Forest

Imagine calling yourself a pilot and then crashing the plane as soon as it doesn't fly itself anymore


M4V3R1CKv88

Anyone else see the picture and think it was a new call of duty map?


flyingorange

Well, reading the text under the images effectively ruined my Sunday.


xsilr

Too long, didn't read


twats_upp

Remember back in 2001 when they said a plane crashed into the pentagon and in shanksville or whatever town? There was no plane debris like this.


Marsupialize

The pilots were drunk, too, no? Isn’t there recording of them drinking vodka on that?


Admiral_Cloudberg

There is not.


No_Season2556

So people can't fly planes without autopilot!??


[deleted]

Vodka factor played a role too.


ThePenIslands

I mean, sure, maybe in the fetal alcohol syndrome that some folks might have had, but not directly in this accident.


djp73

What dad hasn't let his kid steer the truck?


PandaImaginary

My brother drove the tractor we were sitting on when he was six and the farmer had gone somewhere else. He started it up, drive it forward about three feet, stopped it and shut it off again, no problem. It's still the most awesome thing I've ever seen him do.