ATL04IA073 · Cessna 208B
Rushton Air Cessna 208B · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Columbus Airport (CSG) to Auburn University Regional Airport (AUO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04IA073
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- 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
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N125AR
- Operator
- Rushton Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbus Airport (CSG), Columbus, GATo Auburn University Regional Airport (AUO), Auburn, AL
- 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Flt control syst, rudder control cable/rod › Overtorque
- Manufacturer › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Manufacturer › Procedure inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight crew, during the takeoff roll the co-pilot noticed that the right rudder and trim controls were not responding. During the flight they began to diagnose the problem. The pilot continued the flight and made an uneventfully landing. During the post-landing examination of the airplane, the right rudder cable was found broken. Examination of the rudder cable by the NTSB Materials Laboratory found that the wire rope portion of the cable was fractured just inside the clevis fitting at the forward end of the cable. The fracture of the wire rope portion on the control cable assembly was the result of fatigue cracking that initiated because of the introduction of bending loads due to the over-torque of the clevis bolt during the manufacturing process.
Probable cause
The fatigue fracture of the wire rope portion on the rudder control cable assembly due to improper installation and inadequate procedures by the aircraft manufacturer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04IA073
- Event ID
- 20040209X00173
- Case number
- ATL04IA073
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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, coordinates, 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: 81a4167615229d8cc625ea6007ac566aca87dd0221a7255915a6d4f27f26bfe0; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:59:41.261Z.