[8] The first officer was 26-year-old Lee Edward Bruecher, hired by Continental four months earlier; he had previously flown for Rio Airways[8] and passed his initial proficiency check in the DC-9 in mid-September.

[9] At the time of the accident on Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service was reporting moderate wet snow at Stapleton International Airport.

A fuel-fed flash fire ignited in the left wing shortly after it struck the ground, causing a "fireball" inside the cabin.

As the DC-9 skidded, the left side was tilted over and the tail was inverted; this action caused the center section of the fuselage to compress and crush many of the passengers on board.

[13][14] In July 1988, Continental Airlines filed a report with the NTSB positing the causes of the crash as wake turbulence, poor snow plowing on the runway and errors by air traffic controllers.

[16][17][18] Investigators also discovered that before he began working for Continental, Bruecher had been dismissed from another airline after failing on three occasions to pass a flight examination.

[1]: 33–34  Based on this, the NTSB concluded that a small amount of ice on the wings had caused Flight 1713 to have significant controllability problems.

[1]: 37 On September 27, 1988, the NTSB published a final report on its investigation into the crash, attributing the accident to the captain's failure to have the plane deiced a second time, the first officer's poor takeoff performance, confusion between the pilots and air traffic controllers, which contributed to delays, compounded by a cockpit crew where both pilots were relatively inexperienced on the aircraft type.

[1]: ii  Specifically, the NTSB concluded: The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the captain's failure to have the airplane deiced a second time after a delay before takeoff that led to upper wing surface contamination and a loss of control during rapid takeoff rotation by the first officer.

When the NTSB released its report on Flight 1713, it specifically mentioned the fact that "almost 3 minutes of non-pertinent social conversation" had occurred before takeoff.

[1]: 39  When the NTSB later issued its report on Delta 1141, it found that the Delta crew had also engaged in non-pertinent conversation, including a discussion of the cockpit voice recorder from the crash of Continental 1713;[21][full citation needed] First Officer Carey Kirkland joked with flight attendant Dixie Dunn (the latter a fatality) that they too should discuss their crew's love lives so "then the media would have some kind of juicy tidbit" from their CVR in event of a similar disaster.

Continental merged with UAL Corporation (the parent company of United Airlines) via a stock swap in 2010, and the integration was completed in 2012.