Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2023-1986; Project Identifier AD-2022-00015-T; Amendment 39-22693; AD 2024-05-03]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company 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 The Boeing Company Model 767 airplanes. This AD was prompted by a report of cracks on the forward entry door and forward service door cutout aft lower corner fuselage skin and bear strap. This AD requires repetitive inspections for cracking at the affected area, and applicable on-condition actions. 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 8, 2024. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of May 8, 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-2023-1986; 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, 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 service information identified in this final rule, contact Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Attention: Contractual & Data Services (C&DS), 2600 Westminster Blvd., MC 110-SK57, Seal Beach, CA 90740-5600; telephone 562-797-1717; website <E T="03">myboeingfleet.com.</E> • You may view service information that is incorporated by reference 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 at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2022-1986. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Joseph Hodgin, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3962; email: <E T="03">Joseph.J.Hodgin@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 The Boeing Company Model 767 airplanes. The NPRM published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on October 5, 2023 (88 FR 69107). The NPRM was prompted by a report of cracks on the forward entry door and forward service door cutout aft lower corner fuselage skin and bear strap. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require repetitive inspections for cracking at the affected area, and applicable on-condition actions. The FAA is issuing this AD to address undetected fatigue cracks which, if not addressed, could result in a principal structural element's loss of limit load capability, adversely affecting the airplane's structural integrity. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from three commenters who supported the NPRM without change. The FAA received additional comments from five commenters, including ABX Air, All Nippon Airways, Boeing, United Airlines, and UPS. The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Clarification of Exemption From Alternative Methods of Compliance (AMOC)</HD> ABX Air requested clarification as to whether repairs performed using approval via Form 8110-3 are exempt from needing an AMOC for this AD, similar to repairs made using approval via Form 8100-9 repairs. The commenter provided no justification for the request. Repairs performed using Form 8110-3 are not exempt from requiring an AMOC for this AD. As specified in paragraph (l)(3) of this AD, only those repairs, modifications, or alterations required by this AD are exempt from an FAA approved-AMOC if those AMOCs are approved by The Boeing Company Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) that has been authorized by the Manager, AIR-520, Continued Operational Safety Branch, FAA, to make those findings. All other repairs, including those approved on Form 8110-3, will require an AMOC approved in accordance with paragraph (l) of this AD. This is necessary to ensure the repairs maintain an adequate level of safety. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Inclusion of B767-300BCF SRM as an Acceptable Method of Compliance</HD> All Nippon Airways requested that the proposed rule be modified to include B767-300BCF SRM Repair 1 as an acceptable method of compliance. It was not listed as a method of compliance whereas 767-200, -300, -300F, and -400 SRMs were in Tables 1 and 2(a). The commenter requested this change because All Nippon Airways owns 767-300BCF aircraft. The FAA agrees with this change because the repairs and repeat instructions are the same for B767-300BCF as the B767-300 SRM. The FAA has revised paragraph (h) of this AD to include exceptions for repairs performed in accordance with B767-300BCF SRM 53-10-01 Repair 1. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Repetitive Inspections To Be Outlined if No Crack Is Found</HD> Boeing requested that the AD include repetitive inspections for Model 767-2C if no crack is found. This change is requested to maintain the safety of the fleet since paragraph (i) of this AD should include all follow-on actions for the condition of no crack found. The FAA agrees with adding the repetitive inspections to account for all follow-on actions for no crack found to maintain the safety of the fleet. Paragraph (i) of this AD is revised to include the repetitive inspections. Boeing also requested that paragraph (j) of this AD be changed to reference the Airworthiness Limitations (AWL) document associated with the Compliance Time Definitions for Model 767-2C airplanes. The commenter is concerned with the redefining compliance times already defined within the AWL, which could create a conflict with the rule that would require a rule revision if the definitions in the AWL were to be redefined. The FAA disagrees. The FAA's intent is for the compliance time terms used in paragraph (j) of this AD to be the same terms already defined in the Model 767-2C Airworthiness Limitations document. Including the compliance time definitions for Model 767-2C in paragraph (j) of this AD ensures that those definitions are followed, notwithstanding any future changes to the definitions in the AWL. If the compliance time definitions in the AWL are changed in the future, the FAA will consider revising this Airworthiness Directive at that time. In any event, an operator may request approval to use later revised compliance time definitions as an alternative method of compliance (under the provisions of paragraph (l) of this AD). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Change To State That a Ref/C/SRM Repair Terminates the Need for Repetitive Inspections</HD> United Airlines requested the AD be amended to state that repetitive inspections associated with Boeing Alert Requirements Bulletin 767-53A0301 RB, Revision 2, dated May 24, 2023 conditions 3, 4, 7, and 8 (Ref/B) are not required in areas covered by 53-10-01 Repair 1 of the applicable Model 767 SRM (Ref/C/SRM) if done after the initial inspections required by Ref/B/RB. This change is requested because the commenter believes that the installation of a Ref/C/SRM repair after the initial Ref/B/RB inspection should provide at least an equivalent level of safety with the unsafe condition this AD is addressing. The FAA disagrees with revising the AD to state that a Ref/C/SRM repair terminates the need for repetitive inspections associated with RB conditions 3, 4, 7, and 8. In the RB Section 5 Accomplishment Instruction Tables 1 and 2, there is note (c) which states that accomplishment of 53-10-01 Repair 1 of the applicable Model 767 SRM is terminating action for the inspections at this location only. The FAA has determined that note (c) sufficiently outlines that performing repair 1 is the terminating action for the inspections at that location and no further clarification is necessary. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request Change to Paragraphs (g) and (j) of This AD for Clarity</HD> UPS requested amending paragraph (g) of this AD to state “For Model 767-200, -300, -300F, or -400ER series airplanes, as identified in Section (c) Applicability of the AD” to avoid confusion on where applicability is established in the AD. UPS also requested revising paragraph (j) of this AD to state “Compliance Time Definitions for Model 767-2C” instead of “Compliance Time Definitions” to avoid confusion. The FAA disagrees with changing paragraph (g) of this AD language because paragraph (c) of this AD specifies the applicability of the AD and therefore the airplane models affected by paragraph (g) of this AD. For clarification, airplanes not identified in paragraph (c) of this AD are not affected by any paragraph of this AD. The FAA agrees with revising paragraph (j) of this AD to state “Compliance Time Definitions for Model 767-2C” for clarity. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conclusion</HD> The FAA reviewed the relevant data, considered any 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 these prod ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━