Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Canada Limited Partnership (Type Certificate Previously Held by C Series Aircraft Limited Partnership (CSALP); Bombardier, Inc.) Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2023-1880; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00587-T; Amendment 39-22690; AD 2024-04-11]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Canada Limited Partnership (Type Certificate Previously Held by C Series Aircraft Limited Partnership (CSALP); Bombardier, Inc.) Airplanes</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain Airbus Canada Limited Partnership Model BD-500-1A10 and BD-500-1A11 airplanes. This AD was prompted by damage found on two power-feeder harnesses on three airplanes due to chafing with wheel bins. An investigation found that the power-feeder harnesses were not adequately supported to protect from chafing due to vibration. This AD requires modifying the variable frequency generator (VFG) power-feeder harness routing, as specified in a Transport Canada AD, which is incorporated by reference. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This AD is effective May 1, 2024. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of May 1, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">AD Docket:</E> You may examine the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2023-1880; or in person at Docket Operations between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. The AD docket contains this final rule, the mandatory continuing airworthiness information (MCAI), any comments received, and other information. The address for Docket Operations is U.S. Department of Transportation, Docket Operations, M-30, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For Transport Canada material incorporated by reference in this AD, contact Transport Canada, Transport Canada National Aircraft Certification, 159 Cleopatra Drive, Nepean, Ontario K1A 0N5, Canada; telephone 888-663-3639; email <E T="03">TC.AirworthinessDirectives-Consignesdenavigabilite.TC@tc.gc.ca;</E> website <E T="03">tc.canada.ca/en/aviation.</E> • For service information incorporated by reference in this AD, contact Airbus Canada Limited Partnership, 13100 Henri-Fabre Boulevard, Mirabel, Québec, J7N 3C6, Canada; telephone 450-476-7676; email <E T="03">a220_crc@abc.airbus;</E> website <E T="03">a220world.airbus.com.</E> • You may view this material at the FAA, Airworthiness Products Section, Operational Safety Branch, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call 206-231-3195. It is also available in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2023-1880. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> William Reisenauer, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: 516-228-7300; email: <E T="03">9-avs-nyaco-cos@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The FAA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to amend 14 CFR part 39 by adding an AD that would apply to certain Airbus Canada Limited Partnership Model BD-500-1A10 and BD-500-1A11 airplanes. The NPRM published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on September 14, 2023 (88 FR 63034). The NPRM was prompted by AD CF-2023-24, dated April 6, 2023, issued by Transport Canada, which is the aviation authority for Canada (Transport Canada AD CF-2023-24) (also referred to as the MCAI). The MCAI states that two VFG power-feeder harnesses were found damaged due to chafing with wheel bins during maintenance in service on three airplanes. An investigation found that the power-feeder harnesses were not adequately supported to protect from chafing due to vibration. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require modifying the VFG power-feeder harness routing, as specified in Transport Canada AD CF-2023-24. The FAA is issuing this AD to prevent damage to VFG power-feeder harnesses from chafing due to vibration. The unsafe condition, if not addressed, could lead to a loss of generated power from both VFGs, or to a fire in the case of flammable fluid contact with arcing wires. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2023-1880. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from Delta Air Lines (DAL). The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Provide Grace Period</HD> DAL requested the FAA to provide a 30- to 60-day grace period to allow adequate planning for completion of the modification at a maintenance station. DAL stated that some of its fleet of affected airplanes are already beyond the time allotted by Transport Canada AD CF-2023-24. After initiating the incorporation of the service bulletin, DAL discovered numerous issues and worked with Airbus to resolve those issues. (Some of those issues are discussed below.) As a result, DAL reports that it has been unable to complete the modification on its fleet, and, as those airplanes continue to accumulate flight cycles, many DAL airplanes would be grounded when the AD becomes effective if no grace period is allowed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">The FAR</HD> A does not agree with the requested change. The manufacturer has established the compliance time through risk assessment analysis. Unilateral addition of compliance time increases the risk. However, the FAA will consider requests to approve an extension of the compliance time as an AMOC (alternative method of compliance) to address airplanes that have already reached the limit, if sufficient data are submitted to substantiate that the change would provide an acceptable level of safety. No change has been made to this AD in response to this request. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Correct Part Identifying Information</HD> DAL discovered the following discrepancies in the service information referenced in Transport Canada AD CF-2023-24 (Airbus Canada Limited Partnership Service Bulletin BD500-534101, Issue 007, dated October 2, 2020). • Steps 3.7.4.1 and 3.7.4.2 specify installing and torquing screws with the incorrect item number (14). Figure 6 correctly shows this screw as item (18). • Step 3.7.7 specifies installing harnesses with the correct part numbers CPYTG2039 and CPYTH2041. Step 3.7.7.1 incorrectly specifies installing harnesses with part numbers CPWTG2032 and CPWTH2034. The FAA acknowledges these errors and has added paragraphs (h)(3) and (4) of this AD to specify the correct information. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conclusion</HD> This product has been approved by the aviation authority of another country and is approved for operation in the United States. Pursuant to the FAA's bilateral agreement with this State of Design Authority, it has notified the FAA of the unsafe condition described in the MCAI referenced above. The FAA reviewed the relevant data, considered the comments received, and determined that air safety requires adopting this AD as proposed. Accordingly, the FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on this product. Except for minor editorial changes, and any other changes described previously, this AD is adopted as proposed in the NPRM. None of the changes will increase the economic burden on any operator. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Related Service Information Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> Transport Canada AD CF-2023-24 specifies procedures for modifying the VFG power-feeder harness routing, including a general visual inspection for damage at the intersection of the VFG power-feeder harnesses and the surface of the wheel bins, and corrective actions including obtaining and following repair instructions. This material is reasonably available because the interested parties have access to it through their normal course of business or by the means identified in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD affects 16 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s75,r50,r25,xs72"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs for Required Actions</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost per product</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Cost on U.S. operators </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Up to 51 work-hours × $85 per hour = Up to $4,335</ENT> <ENT>Up to $3,538</ENT> <ENT>Up to $7,873</ENT> <ENT>Up to $125,968.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Authority for This Rulemaking</HD> Title 49 of the United States Code specifies the FAA's authority to issue rules on aviation safety. Subtitle I, section 106, describes the authority of the FAA Administrator. Subtitle VII: Aviation Programs, describes in more detail the scope of the Agency's authority. The FAA is issuing this rulemaking under the authority described in Subtitle VII, Part A, Subpart III, Section 44701: General requirements. Under that section, Congress charges the FAA with promoting safe flight of civil aircraft in air commerce by prescribing regulations for practices, methods, and procedures the Administrator finds necessary for safety in air commerce. This regulation is within the scope of that authority because it addresses an unsafe condition that is likely to exist or develop on pr ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━