The FAA is banning single-pilot operations on eight models of Cessna Citation jets, from the first 500 series through to the Encore+ citing compliance and safety issues. The ban applies to models that are certified for two-pilot operations but for which exemptions have been granted to allow single-pilot operation. The agency said in a policy notice (copied below) it did an investigation into 14 training organizations and 13 of them had their ability to sign off on single pilot exemptions rescinded for non-compliance or failure to provide documentation. The FAA also looked at Citation accidents and found that “Part 25 CE-500 aircraft operated with a single pilot are involved in approximately twice the rate of accidents as Part 23 CE-500, 510 and 525 aircraft flown with a single pilot.” That alone justifies the elimination of single-pilot operations because a foundational tenet of all exemptions is that they “provide an equivalent level of safety or result in no adverse impact on safety,” the notice says. The agency has been issuing single-pilot exemptions on some Citations for 40 years. The affected aircraft models are Citation 500, 550, S550, 552, and Citation 560 models including the Citation V, Ultra, Bravo, Encore and Encore+.
The agency cited two recent accidents, which killed a total of 13 people and hurt eight on the ground, in which illegal single-pilot operations were discovered by the NTSB. The new policy will rescind all single-pilot training exemptions for schools offering them and invalidate single-pilot privileges for those who have those logbook endorsements. Those who got the single-pilot endorsements can use that proficiency check to satisfy pilot-in-command requirements but they will have to fly with a qualified SIC from now on. The notice is due to be included in the Federal Register on September 28.
Its about time!
other types will follow before long
Well there goes the safety factor that some of us had as single pilots. Now we have to be distracted in our duties by becoming a flight instructor to the least expensive right seat candidate available.
Oh ok captain. You’ll just have to take an extra five minutes and teach them everything you know.
Inexperience can be trained over time. Attitude problems can’t.
😂
Looks to be well-justified.
Greg Biffle crash had nothing to do with the FAA logic for the ruling. But it was mentioned.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n6S9QUbGFrM&pp=ygUgRkFBIFNpbmdsZSBwaWxvdCBjaXRhdGlvbiBydWxpbmc%3D
Sounds like it may be justified, but, Yikes!
I own and fly a Mooney. I’m not knowledgeable in small turbines. What makes a plane such as a Citation, regardless of model, such a difficult plane to fly single pilot?
As a former 121 pilot in the 737 and a 135 jet and turbo prop instructor with type ratings in both the CE500 and 525, I can understand the reasoning specially if backed up with well parsed data. However, I can unconditionally state that a CE525 on one engine is way easier to control than a King Air (I have experience in all non-type rating models save the Honeywell nee Garrett powered B100). The biggest issue is people who don’t fully learn the systems, and/or follow checklists. Plus as Russ stated, if some accidents are due to people trying to fly them single pilot who haven’t been trained, qualified or checked, how is that an issue with the aircraft? Like with most accidents in high performance aircraft, it boils down to insufficient initial and recurrent training.
Many of the Citations fly at almost 3 times the speed of your Mooney and most are certified to fly at FL450. They aren’t necessarily more difficult to fly, but they require much more training.
But, but that requires more time and money, and effort.
FL450 gets you over the top of the weather that ices up Mooneys and it also gets you over the thunderstorms that cause Mooneys to break apart in flight at low altitudes. 3 times the speed gives 1/3 less time enroute for that weather to develop and change. That speed and range also give the jet pilot lots more airports to use as alternates as long as the pilot does basic fuel calculations.
Maybe Mooney pilots should stick to Mooneys if they like bumping through thunderstorms, ice and low altitude weather with a student in the right seat.
It takes far more training and quite frankly (guts) to fly a Mooney, a Navajo or any other small piston safely than it does a high altitude jet. And if you lose an engine in a piston aircraft, your survival is an ungaranteed, one shot opportunity that must be performed perfectly to survive.
You seem like a lot of fun to be around, probably always interrupting and correcting people
The problem with people who live fast and loose and despise correction, is not that they come to a swift and bitter end. The problem is that they take the lives of other people with them.
Compared to the turbo-Mooney’s, TWICE the speed is more accurate….
Multi-engine, pressurization systems, higher altitudes and speeds, multiple power sources and busses, more systems, the QRH is quite a bit thicker, and more; need we go on?
No, I get the point. So why certify it as single pilot in the first place?
When that first happened, the fleet was expanding rapidly and the surge of Vietnam adventure pilots had been absorbed pretty well. Cessna was instrumental in demonstrating that a properly trained and current Capt was very capable of flying and operating the bird single-pilot, so an exception endorsement was developed.
One thing military flying can/will give you is pedantic adherence to proper procedures and ability to think and act clearly when the crap hits the fan. We haven’t really had that in a few years like we did in the ’60s and ’70s. Instead, we have pilots trained to pass the check ride in “you can fly too” schools. They might get the training but lack the experience and then the companies (and aircrew) don’t necessarily follow the rules. Add it all up and people end up getting hurt.
Here Here!
School of 😀 “You can fly too!”
Another similar humbling phrase I heard from a freight dog is “The school of I want to be an airline pilot.”
A puppy mill is a commercial dog-breeding facility that puts profit above the health, welfare, and well-being of the animals.
Maybe it’s pilot mills that you are describing? I had one flight school owner from the midwest tell me that he was not interested in the flight student’s education, but that they pass the check ride and he gets his money. We all can teach to the test, but that does not mean that the individual is competent.
I had a student (not for long) that memorized the questions for the instrument knowledge test on the weekend and then took the test on Monday. He received a 100% grade, and three months later could not identify an airplane from a tractor on the flight line. I told him he would have to take a comprehensive ground school class from me before we could continue. He declined and went somewhere else. I am not making this up.
Wow! This is big.
So this appears to affect the Part 25 certified Citations and the two pilot Part 23 certified airframes, but not those ceartified from the factory for single pilots ops. I wonder, why not all of the Part 23 airframes as well?
It looks like the Part 23 single pilot aircraft have half the accident rate of the 500/550/560 variety. Or so it says in the text. Might be related to avionics or training.
It’s all about certification. Single pilot vs. waver.
Citations, whether part 23 or part 25 have a wide variety of avionics packages, primarily Collins, Garmin and Honeywell, with all kinds of combinations, whether autopilot, flight director, primary Nav or communications. You could get into 5 different models, or even 5 of the same model and have a different setup in each and every airplane. Add to that the performance and systems differences for 9 type ratings in one and a pilot could potentially get himself into a lot of trouble with one type rating for 9 airplanes.
Good decision!
This will result in more dead people in the end.
Some owner operators will downgrade back to turboprops, thus suffer the intrinsically lower safety of that type over a twin jet.
Some owner operators will switch to single pilot jets, thus still operating single pilot and these other types are not any safer to operate that way. So no safety gain.
Some owner operators will now hire basic SICs who just barely meet 61.55 qualifications. Often, this will just be another dead body at the accident scene.
The entire basis of the FAA decision boils down to “some people weren’t following the rule, so we got rid of the rule”. That makes no sense given those that were following the rules were flying safely.
It wasn’t a rule. It was an exemption, which has to be in the public interest. The accident rate argued against it. If Cessna wanted to allow those aircraft to fly single pilot, they could have pursued certification under Part 23.
The FAA has not shared the data they used to conclude the accident rate was “against it”. Independently analysis by others show the people NOT following the SPE rules were having accidents, and the people following the SPE rules were not, so the data shows the SPE was SAFE. The FAA used the rule breakers to say the rule was flawed, which is stupid. The rule followers were doing just fine.
Cessna could not use the part 23 rules back in the early years because the FAA did not allow part 23 Commuter category for jets. Thus the planes are part 25 only due to an accident of history. Indeed, the safety of the Citations was used as evidence FOR expanding part 23 to higher weight jets under the commuter category. Every small jet AFTER the Citation uses the part 23 rules now due to Cessna advocating for that. So the irony here is that the planes that created the single pilot rules for later jets are the ones no being denied that benefit.
The FAA determined the part 25 Citations were “operationally identical” (their words) to the part 23 version, and indeed they are. The SPE has thus stood for 42 years. Then, today, with 1 business day notice, the FAA is grounding the single pilot operations. This is a hatchet job with complete lack of due process and reasonable action on the part of the FAA.
Mike, while I certainly agree that undoing 42 years of Citation SPE in one day without due process is out of line, we have to remember that the FAA moves based on public pressure much like other bureaucracies. And I think that much of that pressure is due to all of the high profile crashes in the last 2 years and especially the last few weeks. Heck, even Air force One had the slides deployed on the ramp in the last 2 weeks. Ironically, most of these high profile crashes were 2 pilot operations, not single pilot. So who does the FAA go after? You guessed it. Single pilot Citations. Another part of the problem is that in the instructor race to get a real paying job with a livable wage, we end up with students training students. There was a time when insurance companies just looked at an inexperienced pilot and said “NO.” But there are lots of wealthy people out there now who can dangle ever larger quantities of green paper in their face to entice insurance companies to go against their better judgement.
The FAA FRN notice specifically references two crashes and specifically says these crashes had pilots who were not compliant with the exemption. So they shouldn’t count against those of us who are compliant and not crashing. The FAA got it backwards!
The other thing you should know is that some models come in both single pilot (part 23) and two crew (part 25) versions and they are IDENTICAL operationally (FAA says so). The part 23 aircraft are not affected by this policy. So it makes no sense identical aircraft have different operating rules.
Lastly, the idea hiring an SIC stops crashes is completely false. In many cases, having an SIC simply adds one to the body count. Witness Payne Stewart accident, two pilots, both dead. Or the Lear Jet at KTEB, two pilots, both dead. Or the Philly Mexico jet, two pilots, both dead. The list is endless. Putting a noob in the right seat actually increases my workload as PIC, and with the sudden demand for more SICs, you will have more noob SICs flying now.
Though no one will be able to count them, there will be more dead people due to this decision. Some will go down to single pilot turboprops which are intrinsically less safe, some will go to single pilot jets, so no SIC safety gain, and some will hire noob SICs which will do almost nothing to enhance safety and add to the body count.
Having an SIC in the oner flown light jet ecosystem does not stop crashes. That is a huge myth. The pilots who would be skimpy will just find warm bodies to put in the seat and no safety gain was made. That’s the truth.
As the old saying goes, man if you want to argue with me, you’re gonna have to change the subject because I agree with you 100% on every point you made.😀😀😀
“The agency cited two recent accidents, which killed a total of 13 people and hurt eight on the ground, in which illegal single-pilot operations were discovered by the NTSB.”
Right, it wasn’t the pilots who were following the rule that as the problem, it was the corner cutters, the “illegal” pilots. Go after them and leave the legal pilots alone.
Sounds like a failure of FAA oversight but they make more rules and take a victory lap. Go after the cheaters and leave the rest of us alone. I work my a** off to know my jet and stay proficient. In the meantime, they leave Citation CJ series alone because they were certified under a different FAR that allows single pilot type rating with no exemption. The systems, complexity and workload are very similar to Cessna 500 series. Their stats were cherry picked. Make it make sense. Guess I’ll sell and buy a CJ3 or CJ4
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. “You can’t mass produce safe and experienced pilots by simply building more aircraft and sending them to simulator training.” Single pilot can be far safer than 2 pilots in many situations, especially if they have not trained together and learned to work together. It’s just more confusion, or if experience is paired with inexperience it’s just that many more variables a flight instructor has to add to his airline captain duties.
That goes for 767 Amazon cargo planes, 747 international airliners, Cessna 150’s and everything in between. If you put inexperienced pilots, or pilots who never should have been certified into the first place into the cockpit, it will lead to disaster. This whole stupid idea that you can be an astronaut, a pilot or the president of the United States when you grow up has created an anything goes atmosphere in more places than any of us care to admit. America got so politically correct and money hungry that it threw all common sense out the window on an overwater flight.
Inspector Harry Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood) said the famous line “A man’s got to know his limitations” and that’s doubly true in aviation.
Inexperienced pilots don’t, won’t and can’t know their limitations across a wide range of situations. They don’t have the experience, expertise or the wisdom necessary to make go and no go decisions. That is why someone with age, experience and wisdom needs to make the decision for them. In years past, either an FAA examiner, an insurance company, or the aircraft owner made the no go decision for them. Maybe the airline they worked for had an older, highly experienced old gentleman with the wisdom to stop a flight from departing with a young gang ho captain that was ready and willing to charge into hell and back with a load of passengers. Sometimes it was an airport manager or just someone in the chain with enough common sense to say “no, we are closing the airport.” Sometimes it was passengers who cared enough about their own life to just say, “you know what!!!, this is crazy. I’m not getting on an airplane with that person in the cockpit.” Or maybe “ you know what, this person is not dealing with reality at any age just from the conversation I had with them, or they’re not old enough,” or just plain old fashioned “I don’t trust this person for whatever reason.”
Knowing your limits is for older, proven, experienced pilots who many people look to in making decisions for those who are less experienced, or if they just plain don’t know about aviation.
“You don’t know what you don’t know when you are inexperienced or naive.”
We have allowed anybody and everybody access into the cockpits of our airplanes, often based on political correctness and sometimes shear hopium that they would succeed for whatever reason. Now we have a choice to make. We can either undo that access, or we can sit here and watch airplanes run off the end of runways and take bets on who does it next.
Looks like a good time to be holding a CE-5?? type rating and looking for an entry level flying job.
Interesting that many single pilot accidents were due to “illegal” pilots. How’s about banning those first
Right you are. And I’m told that the FAA has shut down the training authority of numerous training operations who were giving away Citation types.
The busiest person in the world is someone flying a 421 or equivalent!
The Citation has got to be simpler to fly!!
26,000 hours in everything from a Baby Ace to turboprops to bizjets to several heavy jets;
Jets are simpler;
Please don’t tell me it’s about speed;
If people are breaking the rules; deal with that;
This is a huge overreach; bet someone in the regulator can’t hack single pilot operations!
Couldn’t agree more! However it is a little bit about speed and thinking ahead. Like the old saying about the plane being on short final, but the pilot is still back at the outer marker. Plus the fact that with turbojets idle thrust still provides thrust, not drag like a prop does, and being much cleaner aerodynamically won’t slow you down. You need to come in on speed and profile each and every time.
Everybody is limited to 250knots below 10K feet. Even if they can punch through Mach up high. Take guy that has been fighting for his life in a Cessna 421 for 10 years in all kinds of weather and he will likely respect his new jet type rating. Take a person that has very little flight experience and has never been required to respect or fear anything and put them in a jet and they will give the NTSB and the insurance company an opportunity to earn their pay.
Single pilot IMC in even a complex single is busy, busy, and more so in a twin. I have zero jet time. However, when it went single pilot for Citations years ago, I think way too many became single pilot owners of their new jet. Seldom flew, and proficiency was way missing. All is usually well until something out of the ordinary happens. Then too busy and no experience comfort, and down it goes into the lake (happened near here) smacking the water at about 400 kts. A professionally trained pilot that maintains experience can do single pilot. An amateur owner pilot just cant. My opinion. I always think back to Munson. Or to our recent loss of control upon entering IMC just minutes after departure. The weight loss church lady with her husband , previous Tarzan actor at the controls.
200% Agree!!
Jerry kutumian
I’m not mistaken, any jet over 12500 requires a single pilot waiver, including CE 525 Also, if you have a ce 500 A straight 500, and it meets all the criteria of the a 501, with the long wing altitude, hold altitude, capture ident button and headsets, and the only other item that was required was cessna had to approve it. That should not be a requirement. If you have those items, you should be able to get a field approval that you meet the requirements of a 501, it’s just that we haven’t fought it with the feds.
“I’m not mistaken, any jet over 12500 requires a single pilot waiver, including CE 525”
You are mistaken.
Jets, since about 1990, can be certified in the part 32 Commuter category which goes up to 19,000 lbs. The CJ3, CJ4, PC-24, P300 are examples. Every airplane under 19,000 lbs certified after the legacy Citations was single pilot. it is only an accident of history that the legacy Citations were not given this opportunity to be the same.
BTW, there are service bulletins that convert 500 to 501, and 550 to 551. The process is paperwork, the planes are mechanically identical. With this new ruling from the FAA, the 500 and 550 owners can’t fly single pilot, and the 501 and 551 can, operating the identical airplane. Makes no sense.
I think the Instant Update headline was misleading: “FAA Bans Single-Pilot Citation Operations”. One would think that no Citations could be flown single-pilot anymore.
Yeah, we fixed that on the homepage before most people even got the alert but once we hit the button on an alert it can’t be changed. Sorry for the confusion.
Not a problem, Russ. Not even sure why I posted that. Keep up the good work with AvBrief–excellent site!
It’s kind of hard to come up with an accurate title when that many different airplanes are involved and the language of the ruling is so ambiguous as with all bureaucracies. Then there is the question of who all is affected and how long before it takes effect.
I get that now…as I started digging, I realized that it was more complicated than I thought. I still don’t fully understand it, but ChatGPT helped! I think ChatGPT said about 1,250 airplanes were affected and between 400-800 pilots. But ChatGPT isn’t always accurate!
Good info. Thx.
Following the logic of some, it should be clear.
Restrict the maximum cruise speed (less intense impact/ less sudden stop) and fly without pilots (less dead bodies at the crash site).
So, by definition, the FAA is killing people by mandating a return to a copilot and forcing cheap operators to downgrade to a plane that can be flown single pilot.
A company affording a multi-million dollar toy like a Citation should be capable to invest in a properly trained crew. Cant do it? Fly the airlines.
Colorado
7 hours ago, overweight Citation V with snow contaminated wings failed to rotate before overrun.
10 on board and article says neither pilot held required qualifications.
Here is the accident report. Report She says it wouldn’t rotate.
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/468989
A bit confused here Sir …as the Link provided referes one to a December, 2024 Accident Report?
You are correct about the date and you caught it before I did. The 7 hours ago at the time was when that media outlet reported the findings I suppose. Thats why we have so many details in the report. Kind of like an aviation weather report. There’s an effective time and a reported time. I was not previously aware of that Colorado Citation accident, but the timing of the FAA response a year and a half later appears typical. Thanks for the catch. To be honest, after reading several other citation crash reports, I’m not certain either. But something has lit 🔥 a fire under the FAA that brought this ruling. They wouldn’t be this drastic for just 1 or 2 crashes. I suppose we will learn more in the coming days. I have a trainer friend who says the single pilot days of those models is officially over, at least until someone else makes a move. But I’m pretty confident that this one weighed heavily in their decision.
When all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.
The Biff crash had nothing to do with SPW. The only reason theres twice as many crashes in the 2 pilot cert aircraft vs the single pilot cert aircraft is because there 6 times as many of the 2 pilot cert aircraft being flown. The SP vs 2 pilot aircraft are identical, the only real difference is paperwork.
I’m so glad that you brought up that point. So now that single pilot Citation 500, 550 and 560 operations have been halted and are no longer a factor, we have the perfect testing ground to find out if 2 pilots are better than 1 pilot with this particular type. And it should be a really good indicator because there are so many airplanes in the grouping. Meanwhile, we can watch the 525 statistics which are still single pilot Citations running side by side. This should be an interesting winter.
Not sure if this was one or 2 pilots, or if it was part of FAA motivation for the ruling.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X62MUP82GI4&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D%3D
How many aircraft will this affect. There is going to be a huge demand for Citation FO’s starting immediately. The salary level just went up. Way up in some cases. There is also going to be a lot of demand for training on Citations, with a limited number of trading slots available.