Narrative:

We were at cruise at FL290 and we received a flap degraded message; we pulled up the flight control page and it was showing the left flap going from 0 to 4 degrees and back; we did notice a slight pitch change but then it returned to normal; we called dispatch and maintenance and advised them of our situation; we also asked the flight attendant to look at flap to see if she could see if flap was moving. She did not detect any movement and we did not feel any rolling at this time. We decided we should continue; after about two more minutes the indication of flap deflection started to increase to up to 8 degrees to 0. We then started to get hydraulic 1 and 2 off messages and the aircraft started to pitch.we disconnected autopilot and the first officer said he could feel some pitching and rolling. We slowed to 230 KTS and decided we should divert to ZZZ. Contacted dispatch and told them we were diverting to ZZZ. Contacted ATC and declared an emergency and told them we wanted to divert to ZZZ. Captain contacted the flight attendant and told her we were diverting to ZZZ; we had a flap issue and we should have a normal landing just a little faster than usual. Captain then made announcement to the passengers that we were diverting to ZZZ due to an indication error and we wanted to be safe. At this time the left flap indication was varying from 0 degrees to up to 11 degrees deflection. The first officer who was flying did feel some rolling and pitching moments. We decided to do a flap 0 landing due to nature of problem and did not want to take any chance in moving flaps. We did the flap fail QRH and got landing info from dispatch. Performed flap 0 approach and landing safely with no other problems.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A CL-65 flight crew diverted to the nearest suitable airport when they received a 'Flap Degraded' CAS message accompanied by uncommanded pitch axis changes.

Narrative: We were at cruise at FL290 and we received a flap degraded message; we pulled up the flight control page and it was showing the left flap going from 0 to 4 degrees and back; we did notice a slight pitch change but then it returned to normal; we called Dispatch and Maintenance and advised them of our situation; we also asked the Flight Attendant to look at flap to see if she could see if flap was moving. She did not detect any movement and we did not feel any rolling at this time. We decided we should continue; after about two more minutes the indication of flap deflection started to increase to up to 8 degrees to 0. We then started to get hydraulic 1 and 2 off messages and the aircraft started to pitch.We disconnected autopilot and the First Officer said he could feel some pitching and rolling. We slowed to 230 KTS and decided we should divert to ZZZ. Contacted Dispatch and told them we were diverting to ZZZ. Contacted ATC and declared an emergency and told them we wanted to divert to ZZZ. Captain contacted the Flight Attendant and told her we were diverting to ZZZ; we had a flap issue and we should have a normal landing just a little faster than usual. Captain then made announcement to the passengers that we were diverting to ZZZ due to an indication error and we wanted to be safe. At this time the left flap indication was varying from 0 degrees to up to 11 degrees deflection. The First Officer who was flying did feel some rolling and pitching moments. We decided to do a flap 0 landing due to nature of problem and did not want to take any chance in moving flaps. We did the flap fail QRH and got landing info from Dispatch. Performed flap 0 approach and landing safely with no other problems.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.