Continental Airlines Boeing 737-824 accident
Boeing 737-824 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD99FA052
- 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 737-824
- 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
- N12221
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), Newark, NJTo Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU), San Juan, PR
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Weather condition › Turbulence, clear air
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight at 29,000 feet in smooth air with the seat belt sign turned off. The crew reported two jolts, and the airplane descended 600 feet. Due to possible injuries, the crew diverted to Bermuda (BDA) and landed. Readout of the flight data recorder indicated cruise flight at 29,000 feet with no change in heading, airspeed, or altitude for several minutes approaching the accident sequence. The altitude graph showed a slight climb before the airplane descended to 28,400 feet. The graph line indicated a slow recovery to 29,000 feet with no oscillations. The elapsed time between the first altitude excursion to recovered cruise flight was approximately 75 seconds. Of the 155 passengers on board, one passenger received serious injuries and 67 received minor injuries. The flight was scheduled for Flight Level 330 to Flight Level 370. Therefore, no information concerning forecast turbulence at Flight Level 290 was available to the flight crew. The High Level Significant Weather Prognosis chart for that period revealed that no significant weather was shown in the area where the turbulence was encountered.
Probable cause
the aircrew's inadvertent encounter with unforecast clear air turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD99FA052
- Event ID
- 20001212X19286
- Case number
- IAD99FA052
- 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. 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: 5036563fa385fca5b3cf5bdf9d7b0e20673c60f6a42230efad77e370002de087; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:55:21.751Z.