Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-1287; Project Identifier AD-2023-00992-T]</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> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA proposes to supersede Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2012-07-06, which applies to certain The Boeing Company Model 777 airplanes. AD 2012-07-06 requires revising the maintenance program to update inspection requirements to detect fatigue cracking of principal structural elements. Since the FAA issued AD 2012-07-06, the FAA has determined that new and more restrictive airworthiness limitations are necessary. This proposed AD would retain the requirements of AD 2012-07-06 until the new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations are incorporated. The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The FAA must receive comments on this proposed AD by June 28, 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-2024-1287; 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 NPRM, any comments received, and other information. The street address for Docket Operations is listed above. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For Boeing material, 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 this service information 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> by searching for and locating Docket No. FAA-2024-1287. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Luis Cortez-Muniz, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3958; email: <E T="03">Luis.A.Cortez-Muniz@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 relevant data, views, or arguments about this proposal. Send your comments to an address listed under <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . Include “Docket No. FAA-2024-1287; Project Identifier AD-2023-00992-T” at the beginning of your comments. The most helpful comments reference a specific portion of the proposal, 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 the proposal 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 proposed AD. <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 NPRM 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 NPRM, 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 NPRM. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Luis Cortez-Muniz, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3958; email: <E T="03">Luis.A.Cortez-Muniz@faa.gov</E> . Any commentary that the FAA receives that 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 2012-07-06, Amendment 39-17012 (77 FR 21429, April 10, 2012) (AD 2012-07-06), for The Boeing Company Model 777-200, -200LR, -300, -300ER, and 777F series airplanes with an original airworthiness certificate or original export certificate of airworthiness issued before September 1, 2010. AD 2012-07-06 was prompted by a new revision to the airworthiness limitations (AWLs) of the maintenance planning document (MPD). AD 2012-07-06 requires revising the maintenance program to update inspection requirements to detect fatigue cracking of principal structural elements (PSEs). The agency issued AD 2012-07-06 to ensure that fatigue cracking of various PSEs is detected and corrected; such fatigue cracking could adversely affect the structural integrity of these airplanes. AD 2012-07-06 does not apply to airplanes with an original airworthiness certificate or original export certificate of airworthiness issued on or after September 1, 2010, since those airplanes were delivered with Instructions for Continued Airworthiness containing the AWLs mandated by AD 2012-07-06. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2012-07-06 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2012-07-06, new and more restrictive airworthiness limitations are necessary. The inspections and life limits have been updated in the latest revision to the AWLs of the MPD and the damage tolerance rating (DTR) Check Form Document. The DTR document defines inspection options and the damage tolerance ratings necessary to develop the structural inspections required by the AWLs. Airplanes with an original airworthiness certificate or original export certificate of airworthiness issued after January 5, 2024, were delivered with Instructions for Continued Airworthiness containing these new and revised requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">FAA's Determination</HD> The FAA is issuing this NPRM after determining that the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop on other products of the same type design. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Related Service Information Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Section 9, Airworthiness Limitations (AWLs) and Certification Maintenance Requirements (CMRs), D622W001-9, Revision December 2022, of the Boeing 777-200/200LR/300/300ER/777F Maintenance Planning Data (MPD) Document. Subsection B, Airworthiness Limitations-Structural Inspections and Subsection C, Airworthiness Limitations-Structural Safe-Life Limits, of this service information contains airworthiness limitations for structural inspections and structural life limits, among other limitations. The FAA also reviewed Boeing 777-200/200LR/300/300ER/777F Damage Tolerance Rating (DTR) Check Form Document, D622W001-DTR, dated December 2022. This service information provides the DTR check forms and the procedure for their use. This proposed AD would also require Section 9, “Airworthiness Limitations (AWLs) and Certification Maintenance Requirements (CMRs),” D622W001-9, Revision July 2011, of the Boeing 777 MPD Document, which the Director of the Federal Register approved for incorporation by reference as of May 15, 2012 (77 FR 21429, April 10, 2012). 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">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> For airplanes with an original airworthiness certificate or original export certificate of airworthiness issued before September 1, 2010, this proposed AD would retain all the requirements of AD 2012-07-06. For airplanes with an original airworthiness certificate or original export certificate of airworthiness issued before January 4, 2024, this proposed AD would require revising the existing maintenance or inspection program to incorporate new and more restrictive airworthiness limitations, which would then terminate the retained requirements of AD 2012-07-06. This proposed AD would also require sending inspection results to Boeing. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Differences Between This Proposed AD and the Service Information</HD> This proposed AD would require that the reports specified in Section 9, Airworthiness Limitations (AWLs) and Certification Maintenance Requirements (CMRs), D622W001-9, Revision December 2022, of the Boeing 777-200/200LR/300/300ER/777F Maintenance Planning Data (MPD) Document; and Boeing 777-200/200LR/300/300ER/777F Damage Tolerance Rating (DTR) Check Form Document, D622W001-DTR, dated December 2022, be submitted withi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━