Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Distraction; Situational Awareness
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Deviation - Altitude Overshoot; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance
Flight Crew Diverted; Flight Crew Landed As Precaution
Aircraft
On climb out our CAS system displayed 'PTRIM NML FAIL'; 'SWPS FAULT'; 'FLAP FAIL'; 'PTRIM BKP FAIL' all in yellow. Along with 'SPOILER FAULT' in white. At the same time the autopilot disconnected on its own. First Officer was pilot flying 'PF' and I was pilot monitoring 'PM'. [First Officer] immediately noticed the loss of autopilot and took control. As we were cleared to FL270 we continued climb as we discussed what we had going on. After acknowledging what we had displayed; I thought best to have [the First Officer] do the checklist items while I would fly and handle radios. [The First Officer] has a lot more experience with the Phenom and better systems knowledge to boot. I am a High mins Captain. With scattered thunderstorms ahead; over 300 miles to go until destination and in VFR conditions; we elected to return to [departure airport]. As we were now landing no flaps with a return to departure airport I told [ATC] we were returning. [The First Officer] ran all pertinent checklists and found that we needed a longer runway than [departure airport] had with a no flap landing configuration. I elected to go to [a different alternate] and [the First Officer] concurred. ATC helped greatly with information pertaining to runway length; weather and easy commands with clearance limits. As in direct to the airport and descents. I had the passenger lead come up front and explained our situation; she asked how long until touchdown and returned to her seat. [The First Officer] made a call to company and explained our situation. Once that was done [the First Officer] ran the checklists a second time and confirmed we had things straight. With the runway in sight; [the First Officer] ran the no flap landing checklist. What we missed during the checklists was the 'PTRIM NML FAIL' going away; [the First Officer] noticed this and asked me to try the electric trim. It worked normally but with no indication as that display was 'X' out. This helped immensely as the controls were getting heavy as was expected. Landing was as expected; high pitch attitude; fast approach and landing speed; with long roll out. Approximately 8-9000 ft of runway. I was easy on the braking though. We were met by numerous airport fire rescue as we taxied off. Taxi to [FBO] was done normally. We disembarked our passengers and baggage. I talked to a firefighter who was filling out a report. We waited with the passengers till the recovery aircraft arrived.It has come to our attention that this fault is caused by a computer failure that is becoming more common place in our fleet. In my past fleets; I had maybe 2 control issues in 13 years. We had two this week. One was a ground spoiler fail; the second being this event. If there is a way to preempt these issues; it should be taken. I was aware after the fact of becoming a little tunnel-visioned to hand flying the plane when I detected the control pressures changing. At one point I was having to pull upwards of 30 pounds of force depending on speed. Control became easier with both hands until electric trim was restored. This was definitely a distraction for my attention. Having good CRM was apparent and immensely important with my attention taken to flying an unconfigured plane. First Officer kept me in the loop and informed with checklist statuses. This was important to timing needs and when we could land safely.
While climbing to an assigned altitude of FL270; the autopilot disconnected and several CASS messages were displayed. They were PTRIM NML FAIL; PTRIM BKP FAIL; SWPS FAULT; FLAP FAIL; SPOILER FAULT. All of the indicators for the above system had yellow crosses; so a correct position could not be ascertained. I immediately pressed the quick disconnect button on the control column and began flying the aircraft manually.During this process; we were in a climb; and the aircraft was out of trim; which caused me to exceed our assigned altitude of FL270 by 200ft. I returned to assigned altitude within a very short [time]; and the Captain advised ATC that we had a problem. We took a moment to scan and verbally communicate as to what we were seeing and the course of action to take. The Captain and I changed pilot roles; he became the pilot flying; and I became the pilot monitoring. I pulled out the QRH and began completing the respective checklist. I verbally went through each checklist and kept the Captain aware of the status of each item. The Captain was flying the aircraft and communicating with ATC. We diverted to [an appropriate alternate] due to the long runways. All checklists completed as well as all landing computations and appropriate numbers. The landing was performed with no flaps but was uneventful. We taxied into FBO and shut down the aircraft. This would be an excellent training scenario for the sim. We train to land with flaps 0; but we always do it with the autopilot on and no other failure. The event that we experienced had both primary and secondary trim inoperative; we had no flaps [or] ground spoilers; and the aircraft was flown manually. I think that adding multiple failures into a scenario would better prepare us for the situation that we experienced.
EMB-505 flight crew reported diverting to an alternate airport after experiencing loss of multiple flight control system components; including flaps; spoilers; and autopilot.