Lufthansa Flight 540

The Hesse shortly after their delivery

Lufthansa Flight 540 was a scheduled flight Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Johannesburg with a stopover in Nairobi. On Wednesday 20 November 1974, the Boeing 747-130 crashed shortly after takeoff from the airport Jomo Kenyatta International in Nairobi from a low height, with 59 of the 157 people on board were killed. 73 Of the 98 survivors were virtually unharmed.

Aircraft

The Boeing 747-130 with the production number MSN 19747 was delivered new on 13 April 1970, Lufthansa and carried the aircraft registration mark D- ABYB and the baptismal name Hesse. She was the second delivered to Lufthansa 747 and unfortunately the time of four and a half years old.

Misfortune course

After a change of flight crew should start 540 shortly before 8 clock in the morning local time in Nairobi under the leadership of captain Christian cracking in the direction of Johannesburg. The flying settlement of the track was for the co-pilot Joachim Schacke. The take-off weight of 747 was 254 tonnes, far below the maximum take-off weight.

After take-off from Runway 24, a violent vibrations presented, which were interpreted by the pilot as a problem of one of the four engines. The landing gear was retracted and then the angle of attack of the aircraft is reduced to increase with less engine power can. The leading co-pilot the aircraft nevertheless noticed a complete loss of acceleration and the machine could therefore not hold in the air. 1120 meters beyond the end of the runway there was the first contact with the ground, about 100 meters began to break apart the machine. The rear part of the aircraft broke off the wing root, such as between doors 3 and 4, as a result of impact with a high angle.

The friction heat, large amounts of fuel into the underlying tank and the hot engine nozzles on the wings of the section caught fire. Almost none of the people survived in this section. The front half of the machine survived the impact with significantly lower damage, which almost all located there passengers allowed to escape via the emergency slides or other openings in the fuselage. In the main, it came here to back injuries as a result of impact. The upper deck with the cockpit of the 747 slumped on impact through the lower deck, but no one injured there, since the upper deck only the on-board bar was housed there and nobody was allowed to stay during the starting phase. The three-member cockpit crew escaped through a designated emergency exit in the cockpit ceiling by roping on the trunk.

Causes and consequences

As the cause of the accident Nichtausfahren the Krueger flaps was noted. This buoyancy aid would have led to significantly more lift in the starting phase. Although the choice lever was on deployment, remained the slats in the retracted position, as the separately activating pneumatic extension system had not been activated by the crew. In the short time this error was not noticed. The debt was eventually distributed to Lufthansa because of incorrect working off of the checklists by the crew and Boeing because of safety precautions not sufficient against faulty operation.

As a result of this accident, Boeing has introduced a warning signal, and coupled the extension of Krueger flaps on the operation of the throttle so that the high-lift flaps can be operated together with the slats.

The Lufthansa accused the 53 -year-old pilot and the 51 -year-old flight engineer Rudi cock before serious operator error. Both were dismissed without notice, a labor court reversed the dismissal on but because at the time of termination existed no official investigation report, which could rule out a technical defect.

A criminal case was initiated only against the flight engineer, who should have possibly served a bleed air switches wrong. The trial ended in 1981 with an acquittal for cock.

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