Continental Airlines Flight 517
Boeing 737-300 · Accident while standing
From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Jacksonville International Airport (JAX)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA076
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-300
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N17321
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)To Jacksonville International Airport (JAX), Jacksonville, FL
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Standing · engine(s) not operating
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Flight attendant › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Newark, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
+The flight attendant fell from the main cabin doorway of a Boeing 737, to the tarmac, while the airplane was parked. The airplane had been completely closed and the jetway pushed back in preparation for departure. An agent appeared at the end of the jetway, and asked if two additional passengers could board. The captain agreed to do so, and the agent proceeded back up the jetway to get the additional passengers, without moving the jetway back to the airplane. The flight attendant was advised of the situation. The captain then made a pre-departure announcement over the public address system, and when it was completed, a passenger advised him that the flight attendant had fallen from the airplane. At the time of the accident, the flight attendant had been flying with the company for 4 months. According to the airline's written procedures, the flight attendant was required to disarm, and 'crack' the cabin door, by rotating the handle enough to break the seal. The gate agent would have been responsible for actually opening the door. If the gate agent had specifically asked for assistance, then the flight attendant would have helped to open the cabin door.
Probable cause
The flight attendant's failure to follow cabin door opening procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA076
- Event ID
- 20001205X00384
- Case number
- NYC99LA076
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 017dbc564f6e7e4b3303ccc7c10e51a156b68791b4c2f5c4811d5c8ccde0359b; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:58:14.094Z.