Operators of Embraer Legacy and Praetor business jets have been ordered to carry out immediate inspections of a key flight control component after a fault was identified during routine maintenance. The airworthiness directive includes the Legacy 450 and 550 jets and the Praetor 500 and 600 jets.
The issue involves the pitch trim actuator, which controls the position of the horizontal stabilizer and is essential for maintaining pitch balance. Tests revealed failures in one of the actuator’s load paths — a condition that reduces redundancy in a system designed with two independent paths.
If both load paths were to fail, the stabilizer could move freely under aerodynamic forces, potentially leading to loss of control. In fly-by-wire aircraft such as the Legacy and Praetor families, the actuator plays a central role in translating pilot inputs into stabilizer movement.
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The directives were issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Brazil’s ANAC after the anomalies were detected during scheduled maintenance, not in-flight events.
Embraer, in turn, said that has “issued a service bulletin to collect additional in-service data and an operational bulletin outlining an alternative means of compliance, reflecting its disciplined approach to product monitoring and early engagement with regulators.”
Operators must perform functional checks within a limited number of flight cycles or hours and replace any actuator that fails the test.
Companies and owners are also required to report inspection results, allowing regulators and the manufacturer to assess the scope of the issue and determine whether additional corrective measures will be necessary.
