NetJets Aviation Cessna 560XL incident
Cessna 560XL · Incident: flight control system malfunction/failure during landing
From Monmouth Executive Airport (BLM) to Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport (TOL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11IA087
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 560XL
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 560
- 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
- N607QS
- Operator
- Netjets Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monmouth Executive Airport (BLM), Belmar, NJTo Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport (TOL), Toledo, OH
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Cessna 560XL airplane encountered ground and/or in-flight moisture/rain, that collected in the tailcone stinger and subsequently froze around the rudder cables during flight at an altitude above the freezing level. When the pilot attempted to use the rudder to initiate a crosswind correction during the landing flare, he was unable to move the rudder pedals, but was able to land the airplane uneventfully. In the days and weeks that followed, several other 560XL airplanes encountered the same problem. As a result, the airplane manufacturer issued a service bulletin recommending that drain holes be added in the tailcone stinger. The manufacturer had already added the drain holes in production airplanes, yet some production airplanes had drain holes that were not the indicated size. The manufacturer then issued an alert service letter to modify the stinger drain. However, the alert service letter still did not remedy the problem; another 560XL airplane, modified in accordance with the alert service letter, sustained ice-bound rudder cables. The manufacturer subsequently issued a mandatory service bulletin that required the installation of a seal and drain to improve water drainage from the stinger. The misdrilled holes on production airplanes were not detected by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) district office assigned to oversee the incident airplane. The manufacturer has subsequently instituted a specific inspection criteria to verify the drain hole installation on production airplanes, and the FAA has verified engineering requirements, planning changes for technicians to follow, and actual holes, including their dimensions.
Probable cause
The manufacturer's inadequate initial design and subsequent modifications of the tailcone, which allowed moisture to collect and freeze around rudder cables during flight levels above the freezing level and resulted in a loss of rudder authority. Contributing to the accident was the lack of oversight of the manufacturer's design and production by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11IA087
- Event ID
- 20101201X83220
- Case number
- CEN11IA087
- 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: investigation status, 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: d9468ee8c2e69b7b45859cc494b65ef60e8d3f2ffcc83cd87eb14e103e747e88; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:35:45.591Z.