Continental Airlines Boeing 727-224 incident
Boeing 727-224 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA90IA161
- 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 727-224
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N69735
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, CO
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Bleed air system, valve › Open
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AT THE BEGINNING OF A FLIGHT, JUST AFTER TAKEOFF, THE FIRE WARNING LIGHT ILLUMINATED FOR THE NUMBER 3 ENGINE. THE FLIGHT CREW PERFORMED THE APPROPRIATE EMERGENCY PROCEDURES AND RETURNED FOR LANDING. AFTER LANDING, FIRE CREWS EXTINGUISHED THE STILL BURNING FIRE THAT WAS CONFINED TO THE ENGINE COMPARTMENT. INSPECTION OF THE ENGINE REVEALED THAT THE STARTER EXPERIENCED AN INFLIGHT FAILURE. THE STARTER CONTROL VALVE WAS EXAMINED AND FOUND TO OPERATE NORMALLY AT THE TIME OF THE INSPECTION.
Probable cause
THE MALFUNCTION OF THE STARTER CONTROL VALVE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA90IA161
- Event ID
- 20001212X24131
- Case number
- SEA90IA161
- 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: e935672f5affc212751ccba55714230cfc5319c52e3d0792eed4aeb53f13732d; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:00:03.225Z.