ALMOST 35 years ago, dozens of passengers were killed in a fireball crash after a pilot bet he could land the plane blind.

The horrifying aftermath of the fiery Russian Aeroflot Flight 6502 disaster was kept under wraps for years by the KGB.

That was until pictures – smuggled out of the wreckage by fire department chief Colonel AK Karpov – re-emerged, and the true horror was revealed.

In October 1986, Captain Alexander Klyuyev took off from Yekaterinburg and was heading to Grozny in Russia – with 87 passengers and 7 crew onboard.

Shortly before landing, Kliuyev bet the first officer that he could land the Tu-134-A aircraft blind, using only the plane's equipment to guide him to the ground.

Feeling cocky, Kliuyev ordered that curtains be pulled over the cockpit windscreen to fully obscure his vision while 1,300 feet from the ground.

He ignored screeching alarms and disobeyed suggestions from air traffic control – heading straight down.

The plane came to a screeching crash when it hit the tarmac – with the impact flipping the entire aircraft onto its back before it burst into flames.

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A total of 63 people died at the scene, and a further seven passed away in hospital.

One year later, in June 1987, Klyuyev was jailed for 15 years for breaking every rule he was ordered to obey.

But, he was released after only six, newspaper Soviet Russia reports.

His co-pilot frantically tried to save some of the injured passengers, before he himself died of heart failure on the way to hospital.

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