Continental Airlines Boeing 737-3T0 incident
Boeing 737-3T0 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA) to George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97IA219
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-3T0
- 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
- N13331
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)To George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), Houston, TX
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Flt control syst, aileron control cable/rod › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The crew reported that at liftoff, 'considerable aileron and rudder input' was required to maintain straight and level flight, and that when aileron input was reduced to zero, at least 5 units of left rudder trim was required to maintain wings-level flight. The crew returned to the departure airport and landed without further incident. Postflight troubleshooting revealed that the ABSB-4 right aileron bus cable was broken and the ABSA-4 right aileron bus cable was frayed, both where the cables ride over the right wing/body joint aileron pulleys. Examination of the cables at the NTSB materials laboratory concluded that the ABSB cable failure was the result of severe internal wear due to normal movement of the cable over a pulley for an extended period of time. Examination also noted several areas of severe external wear on the cables. The airplane maintenance manual, which specifies inspection of exposed cables at each 'C' check (approximately once per year), contains procedures for checking cables for broken wires and gauging the extent of external wear. An 'optional as needed' step also specifies cable replacement based on reduction of cable cross sectional area. The airplane received a segmented 'C' check, which included inspection of aileron cables, approximately 6 weeks prior to the incident.
Probable cause
Separation of the ABSB-4 aileron bus cable, resulting in reduced lateral controllability of the aircraft. Related factors were wear in the cable and inadequate inspection of the cable by company maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97IA219
- Event ID
- 20001208X08926
- Case number
- SEA97IA219
- 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: 51e77a76c5cf1a25cde01494d7fea714675740ce814be1d73e4bc72e3cd2b00c; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:22:02.909Z.