Executive Jet Management Cessna 560XL incident
Cessna 560XL · Incident: flight control system malfunction/failure during landing
From Teterboro Airport (TEB) to Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11IA111
- 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
- N498AB
- Operator
- Executive Jet Management
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Teterboro Airport (TEB), Teterboro, NJTo Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM), Birmingham, 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 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
During approach and landing, the pilots noted that the airplane had stiff rudder operation. A postflight examination of the airplane found ice in its tailcone stinger, through which the rudder and elevator control cables run. Further investigation discovered that other Cessna 560XL airplanes had encountered the same problem. The design of the airplane was such that water could enter the tailcone, collect there, and freeze around the rudder cables during operations in subfreezing temperatures. The manufacturer had issued a service letter (SL) in 2005 to add a drain hole in the tailcone stinger for in-service airplanes and added a drain hole to production airplanes; this incident airplane had a drain hole in its tailcone that was consistent with the SL. Therefore, the drain hole specified in the SL was not sufficient to correct the problem. In addition, the investigation discovered that some production airplanes had drain holes that were smaller than the size specified in the SL. The manufacturer subsequently issued an alert service letter (ASL) in January 2011 to inspect the existing drain holes to ensure they were the right size, seal an existing drain hole, and add another drain hole in the aft canted bulkhead; however, in March 2011, an airplane modified in accordance with the ASL experienced stuck rudder controls; ice and water were found in its tailcone stinger. The manufacturer subsequently issued a mandatory service bulletin (SB) in October 2011 that specified additional modifications intended to reduce the amount of moisture that can enter the tailcone stinger and to improve the drainage. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) district office that oversees the production certification of the Cessna 560XL and the manufacturer's issuance of associated SLs and SBs did not detect the improper-sized holes on some production airplanes. The manufacturer subsequently implemented a specific inspection to verify the drain hole installation on production airplanes, and the FAA has followed up.
Probable cause
The manufacturer's inadequate initial design and inadequate subsequent modifications of the tailcone, which allowed moisture to collect and freeze around rudder cables during operations in subfreezing temperatures, resulting in a loss of rudder authority during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11IA111
- Event ID
- 20101216X13836
- Case number
- CEN11IA111
- 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: 53513b3e7f9c71923d71a467a53ec61237be563f4760dcf8b3d3d49423762ea2; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:37:42.792Z.