Date:	Tuesday 22 May 1962
Time:	21:17
Type:	Boeing 707-124
Owner/operator:	Continental Air Lines
Registration:	N70775
MSN:	17611/49
Year of manufacture:	1959
Total airframe hrs:	11946 hours
Engine model:	Pratt & Whitney JT3C-6
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 45 / Occupants: 45
Aircraft damage:	Destroyed, written off
Category:	UI
Location:	10 km NNW of Unionville, MO -   United States of America
Phase:	En route
Nature:	Passenger - Scheduled
Departure airport:	Chicago-O'Hare International Airport, IL (ORD/KORD)
Destination airport:	Kansas City Downtown Municipal Airport, MO (MKC/KMKC)
Investigating agency:	CAB
Confidence Rating:	Accident investigation report completed and information captured

Narrative:
Continental Flight 11 took off from Chicago-O'Hare (ORD) at 20:35 for a one hour flight to Kansas City (MKC). The airplane climbed to FL390 and was vectored around a storm area. Just before the Waverly controller wanted to hand off Flight 11 Kansas City Center, in the vicinity of Centerville, IA, an explosive decompression occurred. The flight crew initiate the required emergency descent procedures and donned their smoke masks due to the dense fog which formed in the cabin immediately after the decompression. At separation of the tail, the remaining aircraft structure pitched nose down violently, causing the engines to tear off, after which it fell in uncontrolled gyrations. The fuselage of the Boeing 707, minus the aft 38 feet, and with part of the left and most of the right wing intact, struck the ground, headed westerly down a 10-degree slope of an alfalfa field.
Investigation by the FBI revealed that Thomas G. Doty had purchased a life insurance policy for $150,000, the maximum available; his death would also bring in another $150,000 in additional insurance (some purchased at the airport) and death benefits. Doty had recently been arrested for armed robbery and was to soon face a preliminary hearing in the matter. Investigators determined that Doty had purchased dynamite shortly before the crash, and were able to deduce that a bomb had been placed in the used towel bin of the right rear lavatory.

PROBABLE CAUSE: "The Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the disintegrating force of a dynamite explosion which occurred in the right rear lavatory resulting in destruction of the aircraft."

ICAO Accident Digest No.14 Volume I, Circular 71-AN/63
Fifty years ago this week, Continental Flight 11 fell out of the sky over Unionville

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3 August 1961

N70775

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