Continental Airlines Flight 1156
Boeing 737-130 · Incident: overrun during landing
From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO) to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96IA044
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-130
- 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
- N33202
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO), Greensboro, NCTo Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Overrun
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, excessive
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilots reported that as they neared the destination airport, ATC requested that they keep their airspeed up during the approach. The pilots obtained the current ATIS information, which noted an 'overriding tailwind component' on final approach for runway 36. The surface winds were reported to be from 040 degrees at 7 knots. The captain indicated that he began to slow the airplane for landing during the descent, about 11 miles south of the airport. ATC personnel in the tower indicated that the airplane was fast on the approach, and it touched down slightly farther down the runway than other airplanes that landed that day. They also indicated that the thrust reversers deployed farther down the runway than usual. FDR data indicated that the airplane touched down at about 180 knots indicated airspeed. The FDR data also showed that during the previous landing (made by another aircrew), the airplane touched down at about 140 knots. Subsequently, the airplane ran off the departure end of the runway and stopped about 250 feet onto the overrun area where it encountered mud. Postaccident examination revealed that the two inboard main landing gear tires had blown out during the landing. During a test of the anti-skid system, the channel for the inboard brakes did not function properly.
Probable cause
excessive airspeed was maintained by the captain during the approach/landing phase of the flight, which resulted in an overrun and an encounter with soft/wet terrain. Factors relating to the incident were: the pilot's failure to attain the proper touchdown point, the wet runway condition, and partial failure of the anti-skid brake system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96IA044
- Event ID
- 20001208X05264
- Case number
- IAD96IA044
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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. 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: e015909ef0a607b54fa24d75d0516666f90db71aa6599f1d8e4c3e8a68ed3dfa; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:53:33.604Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N33202; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.