After being delayed on the Denver tarmac due to heavy snow, Continental Airlines 1713 was eventually cleared for take-off. Barely lifting off the ground, the DC-9 abruptly banked and crashed, killing 28 people and leaving a lasting legacy.
Continental Airlines Flight 1713 was a commercial airline flight that crashed while taking off in a snowstorm from Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, on November 15, 1987.The Douglas DC-9 airliner, operated by Continental Airlines, was making a scheduled flight to Boise, Idaho. Twenty-five passengers and three crew members died in the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation of the accident determined that the most probable cause of the accident was the failure on the part of the pilot in command to have the aircraft deiced a second time before takeoff.
Background information
Aircraft
Flight 1713 was operated using a 21-year old McDonnell Douglas DC-9-14, a twin-engined, narrow-body jet airliner with the registration number N626TX.The aircraft was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-7B engines.It was originally delivered to Air Canada in May 1966 and sold to Texas International Airlines in 1968, where it served the majority of its service until Texas International was acquired by Continental in 1982.In 21 years of service, it had accumulated over 52,400 flight hours and over 61,800 cycles.
Crew
The captain was 43-year-old Frank B. Zvonek Jr., who had been with Continental Airlines since 1969. He had 12,125 hours of flight experience, but only 166 hours on the DC-9,48 or "in type." He had been upgraded to captain less than three weeks earlier.The first officer was 26-year-old Lee Edward Bruecher, hired by Continental four months earlier; he had previously flown for Rio Airways and passed his initial proficiency check in the DC-9 in mid-September. He had 3,186 flight hours, but only 36 hours on the DC-9, which was the extent of his turbojet experience and he had not flown at all for the past 24 days. Bruecher was the pilot flying at the time of the accident.The cabin crew consisted of three flight attendants.
Weather
At the time of the accident on Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service was reporting moderate wet snow at Stapleton International Airport.The heaviest snowfall rate occurred between 13:10 and 14:20 MST, with the peak snowfall rate occurring around 13:50.
Accident
Continental Airlines Flight 1713 was scheduled to depart Denver at 12:25, but many flights out of Denver that day were delayed by the inclement weather.At 13:03, Flight 1713 taxied from its gate to the deicing pad; unfortunately, air traffic controllers were not aware that Flight 1713 had departed the gate because the flight crew had done so without first requesting taxi clearance.Deicing was completed at 13:46.
At 13:51, Flight 1713 contacted the clearance delivery controller for permission to "taxi from the ice pad." The clearance delivery controller, believing that Flight 1713 was still at the gate and requesting to proceed to deicing, instructed the flight to contact Ground Control, who then cleared Flight 1713 to taxi to the deicing pad.Having already completed deicing, Flight 1713's crew seem to have interpreted this new clearance to mean they could now taxi from the pad and proceed to the runway.
At 14:05, Flight 1713 was lined up on the number-one position at the north end of Runway 35L and the crew was ready for take off.Not kept properly informed of Flight 1713’s position, the air traffic controllers tried repeatedly to have different planes take off, leaving Flight 1713 standing in the falling snow for several minutes and opening the airliner to the risk of "wing contamination" by ice. Flight 1713 then notified air traffic controllers that they were holding at the start of the runway and awaiting takeoff instructions.
Flight 1713 was cleared for takeoff at 14:14 As the DC-9 was taking off, the pilot in control over-rotated; the DC-9 descended and the left wing struck the ground, causing the wing to separate. A fuel-fed flash fire ignited in the left wing shortly after it struck the ground, causing a "fireball" inside the cabin.[1]: 3 The left side of the DC-9 and cockpit struck the ground next and the DC-9 continued rolling, inverted. As the DC-9 skidded, the left side was tilted over and the tail was inverted; this action caused the middle part of the DC-9 to compress and crush many of the passengers on board.
A total of 25 passengers and three crew members died due to the crash; the final two fatalities succumbed while hospitalized. The captain, the first officer, one flight attendant and 11 of the passengers died from blunt trauma. In addition, five passengers died of head injuries secondary to blunt trauma and 9 passengers died of asphyxia. The remaining 52 passengers and two flight attendants survived. Of the surviving passengers, 25 received minor injuries and 27 received serious injuries. Fitzsimons Army Medical Center sent its personnel to assist in the triage of passengers and 10 hospitals treated the survivors.
Aftermath
After the crash, Continental Airlines reiterated its procedures for handling deicing and developed a computerized assignment program that would prevent “green-on-green” crewing or keep pilots with fewer than 100 hours flying time in type from being assigned to the same flight.
Nine months after the crash of Flight 1713, Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 crashed in Dallas. When the NTSB released its report on Flight 1713, it specifically mentioned the fact that "almost 3 minutes of non-pertinent social conversation" had occurred before takeoff.39 When the NTSB later issued its report on Delta 1141, it found that the Delta crew had also engaged in non-pertinent conversation, including a discussion of the cockpit voice recorder from the crash of Continental 1713.
Stapleton was replaced by Denver International Airport in 1995. It has since been decommissioned and the property was redeveloped as a retail and residential neighborhood. Continental merged with UAL Corporation (the parent company of United Airlines) via a stock swap in 2010, and the integration was completed in 2012
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