What was Lufthansa's first accident after its refounding?

Today's Lufthansa was founded in 1955 and rebuilt its long-haul network with the Super Constellation. On January 11, 1959, flight 502, from Hamburg to Buenos Aires, was operated by the L-1049G registered D-ALAK. On the leg between Senegal and Brazil, the aircraft was approaching Rio de Janeiro-Galeão airport.

Air traffic control cleared the aircraft to descend to 900 m (3,000 ft) over Guanabara Bay as part of the approach to runway 14. It was raining. The Super Constellation descended too low and its nose wheel touched the water; the crew tried to continue, but could not maintain control, and the aircraft crashed near Flecheiras beach, shortly before the runway. The crew had descended below minimums, possibly due to fatigue.

All 29 passengers and seven of the ten crew members died. Only three of the 39 people on board survived. Among the dead were literary patron Susana Soca and Archduchess Maria Ileana of Austria-Tuscany, granddaughter of King Ferdinand I of Romania, along with her husband.

It was the first fatal accident of the new Lufthansa since its founding in 1955, just four years after the airline had resumed flying. The crash added to the list of approach accidents in adverse weather that marked the final era of large piston aircraft on intercontinental routes.

The airline had opened its transatlantic flights on June 8, 1955, with an L-1049G, on a route from Düsseldorf with a stopover in Shannon (Ireland). The D-ALAK belonged to that same version, the best-selling Super Constellation.