Flight 1039 struck the ground in an inverted nose down attitude, after which it caught fire and burned. The airplane was demolished, and all 13 persons aboard were killed. Before ground impact, the horizontal stabilizer, including bulkhead No. 36, had separated from the fuselage. Both elevators and elevator tips, the tail cone assembly, and the aft portion of the ventral fin also had separated in flight. The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the accident was a malfunction of either the elevator control system or the elevator trim system, which resulted in an airplane pitch control problem. The Safety Board was not able to determine the precise problem with the pitch control system.
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