Lufthansa Flight 540

Common card · No. 309886

Lufthansa Flight 540 was a scheduled commercial flight for Lufthansa, serving the Frankfurt–Nairobi–Johannesburg route. On 20 November 1974, the Boeing 747-130 that was operating as Flight 540 was carrying 157 people (139 passengers and 18 crew members) crashed and caught fire shortly after taking off from Embakasi Airport in Nairobi, Kenya, for the last leg of the flight, resulting in the deaths of 54 passengers and 5 crew members. The crash was the first fatal accident involving a Boeing 747, and it remains the deadliest crash in the history of Lufthansa. It also remains the deadliest aviation accident to occur in Kenya.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Werner Fischdick, GFDL 1.2