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

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-1703; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-01054-T]</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> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA proposes to adopt a new airworthiness directive (AD) for Airbus Canada Limited Partnership Model BD-500-1A11 <E T="03">airplanes.</E> This proposed AD was prompted by a design review of aircraft structural and stress reports that resulted in a revision of operational loads for some aircraft flight phases. This proposed AD would require using a certain version of the aircraft structural repair manual (ASRP) and a review and disposition of repairs based on previous versions, as specified in a Transport Canada AD, which is proposed for incorporation by reference (IBR). The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The FAA must receive comments on this proposed AD by August 19, 2024. </DATES> <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-2024-1703; 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, the mandatory continuing airworthiness information (MCAI), any comments received, and other information. The street address for Docket Operations is listed above. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For material that is proposed for IBR 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> You may find this material on the Transport Canada website at <E T="03">tc.canada.ca/en/aviation.</E> It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-1703. • 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Deep Gaurav, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; telephone 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">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-2024-1703; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-01054-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 this 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 NPRM. <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 Deep Gaurav, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; telephone 516-228-7300; email <E T="03">9-avs-nyaco-cos@faa.gov.</E> 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> Transport Canada, which is the aviation authority for Canada, has issued Transport Canada AD CF-2023-70, dated October 5, 2023 (Transport Canada AD CF-2023-70) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition for all Airbus Canada Limited Partnership Model BD-500-1A11 airplanes. The MCAI states that a design review of aircraft structural and stress reports for model BD-500-1A10 and BD-500-1A11 airplanes has resulted in a revision of operational loads for some aircraft flight phases, affecting certain aircraft sections. As a result, repairs and damage assessments accomplished on aircraft to date may have exceeded the available structural margins and require review to ensure they comply with the revised stress data for the affected sections. The MCAI also states that Transport Canada AD CF-2023-37, dated May 30, 2023, mandates that ASRP 136.01 or later approved versions, or Airbus Canada source data approved at the time of the disposition, is to be used for any new structural assessments, repairs and dispositions for all model BD-500-1A10 and model BD-500-1A11 airplanes. The MCAI mandates the review and disposition of all repairs and damage assessments for affected structure and prohibits the use of previously authorized repairs as source data to generate new repairs for affected structure for model BD-500-1A11 airplanes. The FAA is proposing this AD to address in-service repairs in some structural areas that require verification, and possibly further repair, because, if not addressed, they can cause negative margins for the load envelopes. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-1703. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Related Service Information Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> Transport Canada AD CF-2023-70 specifies procedures for additional corrective action for model BD-500-1A11 airplanes to review and disposition all repairs and damage assessments and prohibits the use of certain previously authorized repairs as source data to generate new repairs for affected structure. 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 <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">FAA's Determination</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 is issuing this NPRM after determining that the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in Transport Canada AD CF-2023-70 described previously, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Explanation of Required Compliance Information</HD> In the FAA's ongoing efforts to improve the efficiency of the AD process, the FAA developed a process to use some civil aviation authority (CAA) ADs as the primary source of information for compliance with requirements for corresponding FAA ADs. The FAA has been coordinating this process with manufacturers and CAAs. As a result, the FAA proposes to incorporate Transport Canada AD CF-2023-70 by reference in the FAA final rule. This proposed AD would, therefore, require compliance with Transport Canada AD CF-2023-70 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. Service information required by Transport Canada AD CF-2023-70 for compliance will be available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-1703 after the FAA final rule is published. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD, if adopted as proposed, would affect 71 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this proposed AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,12C,12C,12C"> <TTITLE>Estim ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━