Airworthiness Directives; General Electric Company Engines, and Various Restricted Category Rotorcraft

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-0774; Project Identifier AD-2024-00197-E,R; Amendment 39-22723; AD 2024-06-51]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; General Electric Company Engines, and Various Restricted Category Rotorcraft</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is superseding airworthiness directive (AD) 2024-05-51, which applied to certain General Electric Company (GE) Model CT7-2E1, CT7-2F1, CT7-8A, CT7-8E, and CT7-8F5 engines, and various restricted category helicopters with GE Model T700-GE-700, -701A, -701C, -701D/CC, -701D, -401, -401C, CT7-2D, or CT7-2D1 engines installed. AD 2024-05-51 required a phase array ultrasonic inspection of the torque reference tube magnetic insert braze joint of the power turbine (PT) drive shaft assembly for inadequate braze coverage, and repair or replacement of the PT drive shaft assembly if necessary. This AD was prompted by at least four reports of failures of the torque reference tube magnetic insert braze joint of the PT drive shaft assembly within the last several months. This AD retains the requirements of AD 2024-05-51 and expands the applicability to include a PT drive shaft assembly part number that was inadvertently omitted. The FAA previously sent an emergency AD to all known U.S. owners and operators of these engines and helicopters and is now issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This AD is effective April 23, 2024. Emergency AD 2024-06-51, issued on March 22, 2024, which contained the requirements of this amendment, was effective with actual notice. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication identified in this AD as of April 23, 2024. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of certain other publications listed in this AD as of April 1, 2024 (89 FR 18771, March 15, 2024). The FAA must receive comments on this AD by May 23, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, using the procedures found in 14 CFR 11.43 and 11.45, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> (202) 493-2251. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> 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">Hand Delivery:</E> Deliver to Mail address above between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <E T="03">AD Docket:</E> You may examine the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-0774; 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 street address for Docket Operations is listed above. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For GE service information, contact General Electric Company, 1 Neumann Way, Cincinnati, OH 45215; phone: (513) 552-3272; email: <E T="03">aviation.fleetsupport@ge.com;</E> website: <E T="03">ge.com.</E> • For Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation service information, contact Sikorsky Field Representative or Sikorsky's Service Engineering Group at Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, Mailstop K100, 124 Quarry Road, Trumbull, CT 06611; phone: 1 (800) 946-4337 (1-800-Winged-S); email: <E T="03">wcs_cust_service_eng.gr-sik@lmco.com;</E> website: <E T="03">sikorsky360.com.</E> • You may view this service information at the FAA, Airworthiness Products Section, Operational Safety Branch, 1200 District Avenue, Burlington, MA 01803. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-0774. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Barbara Caufield, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th Street, Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: (781) 238-7146; email: <E T="03">barbara.caufield@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments Invited</HD> The FAA invites you to send any written data, views, or arguments about this final rule. Send your comments to an address listed under <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . Include “Docket No. FAA-2024-0774; Project Identifier AD-2024-00197-E,R” at the beginning of your comments. The most helpful comments reference a specific portion of the final rule, explain the reason for any recommended change, and include supporting data. The FAA will consider all comments received by the closing date and may amend this final rule because of those comments. Except for Confidential Business Information (CBI) as described in the following paragraph, and other information as described in 14 CFR 11.35, the FAA will post all comments received, without change, to <E T="03">regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information you provide. The agency will also post a report summarizing each substantive verbal contact received about this final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Confidential Business Information</HD> CBI is commercial or financial information that is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (5 U.S.C. 552), CBI is exempt from public disclosure. If your comments responsive to this AD contain commercial or financial information that is customarily treated as private, that you actually treat as private, and that is relevant or responsive to this AD, it is important that you clearly designate the submitted comments as CBI. Please mark each page of your submission containing CBI as “PROPIN.” The FAA will treat such marked submissions as confidential under the FOIA, and they will not be placed in the public docket of this AD. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Barbara Caufield, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th Street, Des Moines, WA 98198. Any commentary that the FAA receives which is not specifically designated as CBI will be placed in the public docket for this rulemaking. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The FAA issued AD 2024-05-51, Amendment 39-22702 (89 FR 18771, March 15, 2024) (AD 2024-05-51), for certain GE Model CT7-2E1, CT7-2F1, CT7-8A, CT7-8E, and CT7-8F5 engines, and various restricted category helicopters with GE Model T700-GE-700, -701A, -701C, -701D/CC, -701D, -401, -401C, CT7-2D, or CT7-2D1 engines installed. That AD was issued as Emergency AD 2024-05-51 on February 28, 2024, and distributed to all known U.S. owners and operators of these engines and helicopters. AD 2024-05-51 required a phase array ultrasonic inspection of the torque reference tube magnetic insert braze joint of the PT drive shaft assembly for inadequate braze coverage, and repair or replacement of the PT drive shaft assembly if necessary. AD 2024-05-51 was prompted by at least four reports of failures of the torque reference tube magnetic insert braze joint of the PT drive shaft assembly within the last several months. This condition, if not addressed, could result in improper torque and engine speed indications, which, in combination with specific phases of flight, could create an unacceptably high flight crew workload in maintaining control of the aircraft, and result in consequent loss of control of the aircraft. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since Issuance of AD 2024-05-51</HD> Since the issuance of AD 2024-05-51, the FAA determined that PT drive shaft assembly part number (P/N) 5125T92G01 was inadvertently omitted from the applicability. Therefore, the FAA is superseding AD 2024-05-51 to revise the applicability to include engines with PT drive shaft assembly P/N 5125T92G01 installed. The FAA also revised the applicability of this AD to consolidate paragraphs (c)(2)(iii) through (viii) into paragraph (c)(2)(iii) of this AD and revised the required actions of this AD to reference service information that was published since Emergency AD 2024-05-51 was issued. This AD was sent previously to all known U.S. owners and operators of these engines and helicopters as Emergency AD 2024-06-51, dated March 22, 2024, which superseded AD 2024-05-51. <HD SOURCE="HD1">FAA's Determination</HD> The FAA is issuing this AD because the agency has determined the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop in other products of these same type designs. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Related Service Information Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation S-70/H-60 Helicopter Alert Service Bulletin (ASB) 70-04-17, dated February 28, 2024, which specifies procedures for a phase array ultrasonic inspection of the torque reference tube magnetic insert braze joint of the PT drive shaft assembly for inadequate braze coverage. This AD also requires the following service information, which the Director of the Federal Register approved for incorporation by reference as of April 1, 2024 (89 FR 18771, March 15, 2024). • GE ASB CT7-2E1 S/B 72-A0034, dated February 26, 2024. • GE ASB CT7-8 S/B 72-A0118, Revision 01, dated February 26, 2024. This service information 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">AD Requirements</HD> This AD requires a phas ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━