Lufthansa Flight 502
View of a Super Constellation
Lufthansa Flight 502 was a scheduled flight Lufthansa from Hamburg ( Germany ) to Buenos Aires ( Argentina) with stopovers in Frankfurt am Main, Paris, Lisbon, Dakar ( Senegal) and Rio de Janeiro ( Brazil). The Lockheed L- 1049G Super Constellation aircraft with the registration D - ALAK crashed on January 11, 1959 as it approached the Aeroporto Internacional do Rio de Janeiro / Galeão just before reaching the runway near the beach from. All 29 passengers and seven of the ten crew members were killed. These were for the first flight accident in 1954 the newly founded Lufthansa.
Accident
The crew received from the air traffic control the release, under the approach to runway 14 via the Guanabara Bay at 3000 feet to sink ( about 900 m). During descent there was rainy weather in the area. The machine fell too deep and met with the nose wheel on the water surface. The crew tried to continue the landing, but the control of the aircraft was unable to recover, so that the Constellation crashed near the beach. Of the 39 occupants survived, only the co-pilot, a flight attendant and the flight attendant Hilde Dehler. Among the victims was also Maria Ileana of Romania, daughter Ileana of Romania and Romanian granddaughter of King Ferdinand I.
Aircraft
The built 1955 Super Constellation was delivered on 17 May 1955, Lufthansa. This sold the aircraft in May 1958, the Seaboard World Airlines; in November of the same year came the machine back into the ownership of Lufthansa.
Investigation of aircraft accident
The investigation of aircraft accident could not determine the exact cause of the crash, but came to the conclusion that most likely a pilot error (pilot error ) led to the crash, so that flight was 502 dropped below the altitude that was released for this phase of the landing approach.
Because the crew after the Brazilian aviation rules - but not under the then applicable German rules - had exceeded the allowed maximum flight times, the fatigue of the cockpit crew was noted as a contributing factor.