Continental Airlines Flight 1713

1987 aviation accident

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.

Flight 1713 was operated using a 21 year old Douglas DC 9 14, a twin engined, narrow body jet airliner with the registration number N626TX. The first officer was 26 year old Lee Edward Bruecher, hired by Continental four months earlier; he had previously flown for Rio Airways

At the time of the accident on Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service was reporting moderate wet snow at Stapleton International Airport. 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. 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.

The NTSB investigated the accident. In July 1988, Continental Airlines filed a report with the NTSB positing the causes of the crash as wake turbulence, poor snow plowing on the runway and errors by air traffic controllers. However, the NTSB investigated the wake turbulence theory and concluded that wake turbulence from the preceding flight would not have affected Flight 1713. Investigators also discovered that before he began working for Continental, Bruecher had been dismissed from another airline after failing on three occasions to pass a flight examination. Investigators likewise determined that First Officer Bruecher was at the controls at the time of the accident. 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.

Continental Airlines Flight 1713 was mentioned in the 1988 film Rain Man. The crash was the subject of episode 10, season 18 of Mayday, titled "Dead of Winter". In February 1990, Reader's Digest detailed the flight crew and some of the passengers in its article "Miracle In The Blizzard."