CRJ-900 First Officer reported flight control anomalies were noted during climb that were related to a malfunctioning rudder trim switch. The flight continued to destination where a safe landing was performed.

Date: 2025-04 · Aircraft: Regional Jet 900 (CRJ900)

Anomalies: aircraft-equipment-problem-critical|inflight-event-encounter-loss-of-aircraft-control

Synopsis

CRJ-900 First Officer reported flight control anomalies were noted during climb that were related to a malfunctioning rudder trim switch. The flight continued to destination where a safe landing was performed.

Narrative

During a wings level climbout of ZZZ somewhere around 8;000 feet and climbing I noticed a slight nose right tendency from the slip skid indicator on my Primary Flight Display (PFD). I was hand flying and made a slight nose left input on the rudder trim. Immediately; I began to feel an excessive yaw movement and saw a large nose left tendency on the slip skid indicator. I responded by keeping wings level and adding right rudder to counter the yaw. I asked the Captain if he was inadvertently stepping on a rudder pedal even though I felt no resistance in my own rudder pedals. He said that he was not; and afterwards I noticed the rudder trim indicator was in the full nose left position. I looked back down at the rudder trim switch and saw that the switch was stuck halfway in between the neutral and nose left position. I was able to move the switch back to nose right trim and so I neutralized the trim back to a coordinated position and then placed the trim switch in the neutral position. The captain looked for a QRH procedure but was unable to find one for rudder trim runaway. The time from first trim input to resumption of coordinated flight was less than 10 seconds. No emergency was declared. Dispatch and Maintenance Control were notified through ACARS. We did not use the rudder trim switch for the remainder of the flight. After arrival in ZZZ1 we notified local maintenance and started the write up procedure. We were able to demonstrate for maintenance personnel that the rudder trim switch did not automatically return to neutral if released from a nose left input as designed and would instead stay in the position where it was released.Cause: Jamming of the rudder trim switch in the nose left position preventing the spring load from automatically returning the switch to the neutral position. Not visually checking the return of the switch to the neutral position.Suggestions: Visually verifying the return of spring loaded switches to the intended positions.

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Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.