Continental Airlines Flight 239
Boeing 737 804 and Hyperion Air Gulfstream Aerospace G1159B · Incident: near midair/TCAS alert/loss of separation en route
Event
- NTSB case
- OPS10IA014
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Not recorded
Aircraft 1 · Boeing 737 804
- 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
- N27239
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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 · descent
- Defining eventThe 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
- Near midair/TCAS alert/loss of separation
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Aircraft 2 · Gulfstream Aerospace G1159B
- Aircraft type
- Gulfstream G1159
- 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
- N909JE
- Operator
- Hyperion Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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 · descent
- Defining eventThe 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
- Near midair/TCAS alert/loss of separation
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On March 25, 2010, at 0904 eastern daylight time, an operational error occurred at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center (ZDC) when Continental Airlines flight 239 (COA239), a Boeing 737-800, en route from Miami, Florida, to Newark, New Jersey, and N909JE, a Gulfstream II en route from Palm Beach, Florida, to Teterboro, New Jersey, passed within 1.04 miles laterally and 300 feet vertically over Worton, Maryland. Both aircraft were operating on instrument flight plans in class A airspace under control of ZDC. Required minimum separation between the aircraft was 5 miles and 1000 feet. There was no damage reported to either aircraft and no injuries to passengers or crew. When interviewed, the R12 controller stated that she turned the GII east to avoid entering restricted airspace over Aberdeen, Maryland. The heading issued to avoid the restricted area put the GII on a converging heading with the B737, with both aircraft descending to FL240. Minimum separation occurred as both aircraft descended through FL279 and FL276, respectively, with 1.04nm lateral separation. Review of the R12 controller's training records showed numerous recurring writeups for not maintaining positive control of situations, not taking timely action when required, and use of poor control judgment. Similar issues contributed to the loss of separation between the B737 and GII.
Probable cause
The R10/12 controller issued an improper vector and descent clearance to the GII that put the airplane on a coverging flight path with the B737. Contributing to the incident was the failure of the FAA's training program to correct ongoing controller performance deficiencies before certifying the D10/12 controller to work without immediate supervision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record OPS10IA014
- Event ID
- 20100326X90457
- Case number
- OPS10IA014
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 75f8180cc9aa16d8005b214fc921543360ce09b77d8ec3d04154162b97722919; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:16:06.365Z.