Somehow I wasn’t familiar with the story of Aeroflot flight 6502 from Yekaterinburg to Kuibyshev to Grozny. On October 20, 1986 the pilot of the Tupolev Tu-134A bet his co-pilot that he could land the plane blind. He would draw the curtains on the cockpit windows and make an instrument-only approach.

One of the many bizarre things about this incident is, why would the co-pilot accept a bet in which if he wins he likely dies? There’s only the narrowest window in which he might win the bet and actually collect.

On approach to Grozny the pilot ignored the ground proximity warning. He ignored an instruction to execute a go-around. He touched down at about 172 miles per hour. The plane flipped and ultimately stopped upside down, killing 70 of the 94 souls on board.

On the ground the co-pilot tried to save the lives of passengers on the scene, but died of cardiac arrest himself while being transported to the hospital. The pilot received a 15 year sentence, though reportedly had that reduced to 6 years.

Eight years later, in 1994, the pilot of Aeroflot flight SU593 from Moscow to Hong Kong allowed his 16 year old son sit at the controls. He accidentally disengaged autopilot control of the Airbus A310’s ailerons. That sent the plane into a near vertical dive. While the pilot managed to level off the plane, he stalled the aircraft while pulling up and crashed into mountains in South Siberia.