Lufthansa Flight 540 was a scheduled commercial flight for Lufthansa operated with a Boeing 747-130, 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 and Turkish Airlines Flight 981.