Continental Airlines Flight 290
Vickers 810 · Loss of controllability after in-flight icing
From Midland Air Terminal, Texas, United States to Kansas City Downtown Municipal Airport, Missouri, United States
Event
- 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
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 8 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
Vickers 810
- Aircraft type
- Vickers 810
- 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
- N242V
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Midland Air Terminal, Texas, United StatesTo Kansas City Downtown Municipal Airport, Missouri, United States
- 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 (scheduled domestic passenger service)
- 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
- 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
- Uncontrolled collision with ground/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Miscellaneous acts, conditions › Airframe ice
- Weather › Icing conditions-includes sleet, freezing rain, etc.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Kansas City, MO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
On Continental Airlines Flight 290 (flight number: CO290), a Vickers 812 Viscount crashed on 29 January 1963 during landing approach to Kansas City Downtown Municipal Airport. All 8 people on board were killed in the accident. The crash was caused by icing.
Flight and sequence of events
The flight on the scheduled route from Midland via Lubbock, Wichita Falls, Lawton, Oklahoma City and Tulsa proceeded without incident until the approach to Kansas City. The approach to the final point of the route took place late in the evening in darkness. The pilots had received clearance to land on runway 18 of the Kansas City airport. The approach was carried out under visual flight conditions. When the aircraft was over the runway, it did not touch down but instead flew over it with its nose pitched up. Shortly before the southern end of the runway the aircraft suddenly went from a height of 90 feet (approx. 27.5 metres) into a steep dive and struck the ground around 680 feet (approx. 207 metres) beyond the end of the runway, broke apart and burned out. All eight occupants were killed in the accident.
Accident investigation
The accident was investigated by the Civil Aeronautics Board. It was determined that icing conditions prevailed around Kansas City at the time of the accident. It was also determined that the flaps were extended to the final position of 36 degrees at the time of the crash. The investigators concluded that a loss of controllability due to icing had occurred on the aircraft. Accordingly, undetected ice formation had occurred in flight in the area of the tail unit. The ice accretion caused the angle of attack at the horizontal tail to reach supercritical values. When the pilots extended the flaps to the final position for landing on final approach, the centre of lift shifted rearward. Loss of control and the crash followed.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Continental-Airlines-Flug 290” (revision 237105629, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB remarks
UNDETECTED ICE ON HORIZ STAB IN CONJUNCTION WITHSPECIFIC A/S AND CONFIG CAUSED LOSS OF PITCH CNTL
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Continental-Airlines-Flug 290
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 237105629 · 2023-09-07 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q84955161
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19630129P000072
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Continental-Airlines-Flug 290" (page 10927388, revision 237105629), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case NTSB19630129P000072 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19630129P000072: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19630129P000072
- Map position
- NTSB record NTSB19630129P000072: centre of the town the record names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19630129P000072: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19630129P000072: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19630129P000072: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19630129P000072: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Continental Airlines Flight 290" and NTSB case NTSB19630129P000072, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.