Lufthansa Flight 540

Lufthansa Flight 540

The aircraft involved shortly after delivery to Lufthansa.
Accident summary
Date 20 November 1974
Summary Design flaw, flight crew error
Site Jomo Kenyatta Int'l Airport
Nairobi, Kenya
Passengers 140
Crew 17
Fatalities 59
Injuries (non-fatal) 55
Survivors 98
Aircraft type Boeing 747-130
Aircraft name Hessen
Operator Lufthansa
Registration D-ABYB
Flight origin Frankfurt Airport
Frankfurt, West Germany
Stopover Jomo Kenyatta Int'l Airport
Destination Jan Smuts Int'l Airport
Johannesburg, South Africa

Lufthansa Flight 540 was a scheduled commercial flight for Lufthansa operated with a Boeing 747-100, carrying 157 people (140 passengers and 17 crew members). The flight was operating the final segment of its Frankfurt–Nairobi–Johannesburg route. On 20 November 1974 it crashed and caught fire shortly past the runway on takeoff. This was the first fatal accident and third hull loss of a Boeing 747. This was also the third fatal accident involving a wide-body aircraft, after Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 in 1972 and the crash of Turkish Airlines Flight 981 earlier in 1974. To date, it is also the deadliest plane crash to occur on Kenyan soil.

As the aircraft was making its takeoff from runway 24 at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, the pilots felt a buffeting vibration. The captain continued the climb and retracted the landing gear. However, as this was being done, the aircraft started to descend and the stall warning system light came on. The aircraft continued to descend and approximately 3,700 feet (1,100 m) from the end of the runway, the 747 grazed bushes and grass. It then struck an elevated access road and broke up. The left wing exploded and fire spread to the fuselage. Of the 157 people aboard, 55 of the 140 passengers and 4 of the 17 crew members were killed.

Cause

The cause of the crash was determined to be a stall caused by the leading edge slats having been left in retracted position. Even though the trailing edge flaps were deployed, without the slats being extended the aircraft's stall speed was higher and the maximum angle of attack was lower. As a result, the aircraft was unable to climb out of the ground effect. The flight engineer was found to have failed to open the slat system bleed air valves as required on the pre-flight checklist. This prevented bleed air from flowing to the 747's pneumatic slat system and, since the leading edge slats on the 747 are pneumatically driven, kept it from deploying the leading edge slats for takeoff. The take-off warning system that would have sounded an alarm due to the flaps not being lowered did not have a separate warning that the slats' pneumatic valve had not been opened by the flight engineer.

The faulty state of the slats should by design have been indicated by yellow warning lights: one for the pilot, and eight for the flight engineer. However, both crew members stated in court that these lights had been green. Three possible explanations have since been offered for this inconsistency: that the morning sun was blinding the cockpit crew and thus hampered color perception, that a construction error could have caused green lights despite the retracted slats, and that the crew lied. None of these possibilities could be conclusively proven.[1][2] The flight crew was blamed for not performing a satisfactory pre-take-off checklist, but the accident report also faulted the lack of adequate warning systems which could have alerted the crew to the problem.[3] Two previous occurrences of this error had been reported, but in those cases the pilots had been able to recover the aircraft in time. After this third deadly incident, Boeing added systems to warn pilots if the slat valve had not been opened prior to takeoff.

See also

Bibliography

The final report is this work:

References

  1. ↑ Spaeth, Andreas. "Lufthansa-Unglück 1974. Absturz nach 35 Sekunden" [Lufthansa Accident 1974. Crash after 35 seconds]. Der Spiegel (in German). Retrieved 20 November 2014.
  2. ↑ "Grün oder Gelb" [Green or Yellow]. Der Spiegel (in German). 33 (8). 19 February 1979.
  3. ↑ "Case Study: Lufthansa - Flight 540 - Boeing 747-130, November 20, 1974" (PDF). Blue Skies: GainJet Aviation Safety Magazine. GainJet Aviation (3).

Coordinates: 1°19′09″S 36°55′39″E / 1.3192°S 36.9275°E / -1.3192; 36.9275

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/1/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.