Special Conditions: Aerocon Engineering Company, Airbus Model A350-941 Airplane; Forward Lower Lobe Crew Rest Compartment Installation

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 25</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-1310; Notice No. 25-24-04-SC]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Special Conditions: Aerocon Engineering Company, Airbus Model A350-941 Airplane; Forward Lower Lobe Crew Rest Compartment Installation</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed special conditions. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This action proposes special conditions for the Airbus Model A350-941 airplane. This airplane, as modified by Aerocon Engineering Company (Aerocon), will have a novel or unusual design feature when compared to the state of technology envisioned in the airworthiness standards for transport category airplanes. This design feature is an installation of a lower lobe crew rest (LLCR) compartment located under the passenger cabin floor in the cargo compartment. The applicable airworthiness regulations do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for this design feature. These proposed special conditions contain the additional safety standards that the Administrator considers necessary to establish a level of safety equivalent to that established by the existing airworthiness standards. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Send comments on or before October 28, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Send comments identified by Docket No. FAA-2024-1310 using any of the following methods: <E T="03">Federal eRegulations Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/</E> and follow the online instructions for sending your comments electronically. <E T="03">Mail:</E> Send comments to Docket Operations, M-30, U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Room W12-140, West Building Ground Floor, Washington, DC 20590-0001. <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> Take comments to Docket Operations in Room W12-140 of the West Building Ground Floor at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <E T="03">Fax:</E> Fax comments to Docket Operations at 202-493-2251. <E T="03">Docket:</E> Background documents or comments received may be read at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> at any time. Follow the online instructions for accessing the docket or go to Docket Operations in Room W12-140 of the West Building Ground Floor at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Daniel Jacquet, Cabin Safety, AIR-624, Technical Policy Branch, Policy and Standards Division, Aircraft Certification Service, Federal Aviation Administration, 2200 South 216th Street, Des Moines, Washington 98198; telephone and fax (206) 231-3208; email <E T="03">daniel.jacquet@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments Invited</HD> The FAA invites interested people to take part in this rulemaking by sending written comments, data, or views. The most helpful comments reference a specific portion of the proposed special conditions, explain the reason for any recommended change, and include supporting data. The FAA will consider all comments received by the closing date for comments and will consider comments filed late if it is possible to do so without incurring delay. The FAA may change these special conditions based on the comments received. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Privacy</HD> Except for Confidential Business Information (CBI) as described in the following paragraph, and other information as described in title 14, Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR) 11.35, the FAA will post all comments received without change to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information you provide. The FAA will also post a report summarizing each substantive verbal contact received about these special conditions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Confidential Business Information</HD> Confidential Business Information (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 these special conditions contain commercial or financial information that is customarily treated as private, that you actually treat as private, and that is relevant or responsive to these special conditions, 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 the indicated comments will not be placed in the public docket of these proposed special conditions. Send submissions containing CBI to the individual listed in the For Further Information Contact section above. Comments the FAA receives, which are not specifically designated as CBI, will be placed in the public docket for these proposed special conditions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On August 27, 2021, Aerocon applied for a supplemental type certificate for a LLCR installation in the Model A350-941 airplane. The Airbus Model A350-941 airplane is a twin-engine, transport-category airplane with a maximum takeoff weight of 623,908 pounds and maximum seating for 480 passengers. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Type Certification Basis</HD> Under the provisions of 14 CFR 21.101, Aerocon must show that the Airbus Model A350-941 airplane, as changed, continues to meet the applicable provisions of the regulations listed in Type Certificate No. T000631B or the applicable regulations in effect on the date of application for the change, except for earlier amendments as agreed upon by the FAA. If the Administrator finds that the applicable airworthiness regulations ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> 14 CFR part 25) do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for the Airbus A350-941 airplane because of a novel or unusual design feature, special conditions are prescribed under the provisions of § 21.16. Special conditions are initially applicable to the model for which they are issued. Should the applicant apply for a supplemental type certificate to modify any other model included on the same type certificate to incorporate the same novel or unusual design feature, these special conditions would also apply to the other model under § 21.101. In addition to the applicable airworthiness regulations and special conditions, the Airbus A350-941 series airplane must comply with the exhaust-emission requirements of 14 CFR part 34, and the noise-certification requirements of 14 CFR part 36. The FAA issues special conditions, as defined in 14 CFR 11.19, in accordance with § 11.38, and they become part of the type certification basis under § 21.101. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Novel or Unusual Design Features</HD> The Airbus A350-941 airplane will incorporate the following novel or unusual design feature: The installation of a LLCR under the passenger cabin floor in the cargo compartment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion</HD> Section 25.819 applies to lower deck service compartments (including galleys) but is not directly applicable to forward LLCR compartments. The applicable airworthiness regulations do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for this design feature. Special conditions are required for the certification of the LLCR to supplement part 25. The LLCR will be located under the passenger cabin floor in the forward cargo compartment of Airbus A350-941 model airplanes. It will be the size of three standard airfreight containers and be removeable from the cargo compartment. Occupancy of the LLCR will be limited to a maximum of eight crew members, and it will only be occupied in flight, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> not during taxi, takeoff or landing. A smoke detection system, fire extinguishing system, oxygen system and occupant amenities will be provided. The LLCR will be accessed from the main deck via a stair house. The floor within the stair house has an access hatch that leads to the stairs, which occupants use to descend into the LLCR. This hatch locks automatically in the open position when fully opened. In addition, there will be an emergency hatch, which opens directly into the main passenger cabin area. The LLCR also has a maintenance access/ground loading door, which allows access to and from the cargo compartment. The intended use of this door is to allow cargo loading and maintenance personnel to enter the LLCR from the cargo compartment when the airplane is on the ground and not moving. The proposed special conditions contain the additional safety standards that the Administrator considers necessary to establish a level of safety equivalent to that established by the existing airworthiness standards. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Applicability</HD> As discussed above, these proposed special conditions are applicable to Airbus Model A350-941 airplanes as modified by Aerocon. Should the applicant apply for a supplemental type certificate to modify any other model included on the same type certificate to incorporate the same novel or unusual design feature, these special conditions would apply to the other model as well. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conclusion</HD> This action affects only certain novel or unusual design feature on the Airbus 350-941 airplane. It is not a rule of general applicability and affects only the applicant who applied to the FAA for approval of these features on the airplane. <LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HED">List of Subjects in 14 CFR Part 25</HD> Aircraft, Aviation safety, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements. </LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Authority Citation</H ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━