Executive Airlines ATR ATR72 212A incident
ATR ATR72 212A · Incident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Midland International Air and Space Port (KMAF) to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (KDFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10IA084
- 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
- Airline
- 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
ATR ATR72 212A
- Aircraft type
- ATR ATR72
- 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
- N494AE
- Operator
- Executive Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Midland International Air and Space Port (KMAF), Midland, TXTo Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (KDFW), Dallas, TX
- 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
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight crew reported that, while in level flight, they discovered that both control columns were jammed and they could only move the control column fore and aft a maximum of about 1 inch. After running checklist procedures without success, the flight crew slowed the airplane to 180 knots and were able to regain full control of the elevator. On final approach and after configuring for landing, the elevators again seemed to be jammed. The flight crew conducted a go-around and declared an emergency. During the second approach, with both control columns partially jammed, the flight crew performed a shallow approach to a smooth landing. A postincident examination revealed that brackets holding an elevator stop had fractured, causing the elevator movement to partially jam. The fractures were consistent with fatigue failure and were caused by a combination of improperly installed shim stacks, poor alignment of the L-brackets, and cyclic stresses acting on the lower stop, which were generated by the repeated improper use of the gust lock system.
Probable cause
A fatigue failure of an elevator stop bracket, which resulted in a partial jam of the elevator control. Contributing to the failure was the improper installation of shim stacks, poor alignment of the brackets, and cyclic stresses acting on the lower stop, generated by the repeated improper use of the gust lock system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10IA084
- Event ID
- 20091228X15816
- Case number
- CEN10IA084
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-12-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ab069dfcf0ca09a100f966f24d13c16b6f836156d3d7c2ef38f0421f9ed6b9f6; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:35:29.121Z.