CitationShares Management Cessna 560XL incident
Cessna 560XL · Incident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Naples Municipal Airport (APF) to Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12IA097
- 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
- N576CS
- Operator
- CitationShares Management
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Naples Municipal Airport (APF), Naples, FLTo Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), Dulles, VA
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight crew reported that a "pitch trim miscompare" message illuminated in the cockpit just before they were to level off at 41,000 feet mean sea level (msl). After accomplishing the checklist items and disconnecting the autopilot, the flight crew had to exert considerable forward yoke pressure to maintain level flight. The flight crew found the manual pitch trim control wheel to be "frozen" in the forward position and were unable to move it. They declared an emergency and initiated a descent. Upon reaching 8,000 feet msl, the trim wheel released and the system returned to normal. The airplane landed uneventfully. Maintenance personnel inspected the left and right pitch trim actuators and found that the grease was contaminated with water. The actuators had been inspected and lubricated within the required 1,200-hour interval.
Probable cause
Water contamination in the pitch trim actuators.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12IA097
- Event ID
- 20111205X75757
- Case number
- ERA12IA097
- 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: 80e0785c6b8fcbf2d2c5e895512f452730c887f98d5275acafdd39980ec24c36; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:59:18.778Z.