The FAA ends a rule letting certain twin-engine Cessnas fly with one pilot

The Federal Aviation Administration is ending a decades-old exemption program that let certain twin-engine Cessna Citation jets, built and certified for two pilots, fly with just one at the controls. A notice signed by the agency’s Flight Standards Service takes effect Sept. 29, ceasing all further single-pilot exemptions for eight Cessna CE-500-series models and setting in motion the rescission of exemptions still held by training providers. The FAA points to “widespread non-compliance” among exemption holders and a fatal crash near San Diego as the reasons it is shutting the program down rather than trying to reform it.

A 1984 Exemption Meant for “Increased Flexibility”

The single-pilot allowance dates to 1984, when the FAA created it to give “operators increased operating flexibility and reduced economic burdens” while the agency collected safety data that might eventually support a permanent rule change allowing solo flight in these jets. Four decades of that data collection produced the opposite conclusion: Part 25 CE-500 aircraft flown single-pilot are involved in “approximately twice the rate of accidents” as similar Part 23 CE-500, 510 and 525 jets flown by one pilot, the FAA now says, undercutting the safety case the exemption was originally meant to build.

Under 14 CFR 91.531, any aircraft type-certificated for more than one pilot generally must fly with a designated second-in-command — the baseline every CE-500 variant was built to meet before the FAA began carving out exceptions. The exemptions let individual training providers certify pilots to fly solo in jets Cessna never designed to be flown that way, provided those pilots met each provider’s own training standard.

A Fatal Crash Near San Diego, an “Improper Check” Six Months Earlier

The immediate trigger was a May 22, 2025 crash outside San Diego. According to the NTSB’s preliminary report, a Cessna Citation S550 registered N666DS descended below its published minimum crossing altitude on an instrument approach in the dark, with half-mile visibility and a 200-foot ceiling, and struck power transmission lines roughly 1.8 nautical miles from the runway near Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport. The pilot and five passengers were killed, and eight people on the ground were hurt.

That pilot had received an exemption to fly the S550 single-pilot in December 2024, following a flight evaluation. The FAA’s own review afterward found something more troubling than a one-off lapse: the pilot had received an improper check six months before the accident from a designated examiner employed by the same Part 61 exemption holder that had certified him in the first place — the training provider effectively grading its own work. A second Cessna 550 accident, on Dec. 18, 2025 at Statesville Regional Airport in North Carolina, remains under NTSB investigation; the NTSB says the jet crashed during landing and that “all aspects of this accident remain under investigation,” with a preliminary report still pending months later.

13 of 14 Exemption Holders Already Found Non-Compliant

The San Diego crash was not an isolated failure, the FAA says. A review of the exemption program found that 13 of the 14 Part 61 training providers holding these exemptions had already been denied an extension or had an exemption rescinded outright before this notice was even drafted, either for failing to respond to FAA information requests or for outright non-compliance — incomplete records, improper training documentation, or falsified paperwork among the violations the agency cited.

With the notice’s Sept. 29 effective date, that non-compliance record becomes the whole program’s problem rather than a handful of holders’ problem. Pilots currently flying single-pilot under one of these exemptions must immediately comply with the two-pilot requirements in Sections 91.9 and 91.531, and any logbook endorsement tied to the old single-pilot authorization becomes invalid the moment the notice takes effect. Pilots may keep credit only for proficiency checks that would also satisfy a standard two-pilot operation, meaning some will need additional training before they can act as second in command rather than sole pilot.

Eight Cessna Models Return to Two-Pilot Rules

The notice covers eight CE-500-series designations: the original Model 500 Citation, Model 550 Citation II, Model S550 Citation S/II, Model 552 (the Navy’s T-47A trainer), Model 560 Citation V, Citation Ultra, Encore and Encore+, and the Model 550 Bravo. Every one of them is a twin-engine business jet Cessna type-certificated for two pilots from the start; nothing about that certification changes now. Only the FAA’s willingness to exempt individual pilots from it does, and the notice itself makes that withdrawal permanent rather than case-by-case.

Hugh J. Thomas, executive director of the FAA’s Flight Standards Service, signed the notice on Sept. 24 under docket number FAA-2026-12343, four days before its formal publication in the Federal Register. Cessna still markets the Citation line as the world’s most-flown family of business jets, and the FAA’s notice leaves that fleet flying — just with two pilots up front, the way each of these eight models was certified to operate before any exemption ever existed.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

More from Morning Overview