Pushkin

There are 63 passengers on board flight 593.

Some drinking beer, some are asleep, others are bored.

There are no smartphones to play with because this is 1994.

They left Moscow for time zones ago. Hong Kong is still several hours away.

The flight is long. Time goes slowly.

It's dark outside and even if it wasn't, there wouldn't be much to look at.

The Airbus A310 is inching its way over the vast expanse of sudden Siberia.

Grasslands and forests and hills.

To the south lies Kazakhstan, ahead Mongolia.

The weather is calm, visibility is good, the plane is on autopilot.

And the captain has gone back to the cabin for a snooze.

An off duty pilot Vladimir Makodov is travelling as a passenger.

He's ambled to the cockpit to pass the time with his aeroflot colleagues,

relief captain Yaroslav Kodinsky and first officer Igor Piskarev.

And he's brought guests, Kodinsky's two teenage children.

In this pre-911 era, attitudes to cockpit security were more relaxed.

The kids have got three flights, a perk of their dad's job.

And he's taking them to see Hong Kong. It's their first international journey.

Kodinsky, Piskarev and Makodov shoot the breeze for a while, then Kodinsky turns to his daughter.

Come and sit here now in my seat. Would you like that?

13-year-old Yarna takes his place at the controls alongside Copilot Piskarev.

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