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> Supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is revising an earlier notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to supersede Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2012-07-06. AD 2012-07-06 applies to certain The Boeing Company Model 777-200, -200LR, -300, -300ER, and 777F series airplanes. This action revises the NPRM by proposing to require revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. Since these actions would impose an additional burden over those in the NPRM, the FAA is requesting comments on this SNPRM. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The FAA must receive comments on this SNPRM by November 18, 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 the NPRM, this SNPRM, 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 in this proposed AD, 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 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. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under 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 the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. 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 again revise 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 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 SNPRM 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 SNPRM, 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 SNPRM. 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 requires revising the maintenance program to update inspection requirements to detect fatigue cracking of principal structural elements (PSEs). The FAA 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. The FAA issued an NPRM to amend 14 CFR part 39 by adding an AD to supersede AD 2012-07-06 that would apply to certain The Boeing Company Model 777-200, -200LR, -300, -300ER, and 777F series airplanes. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on May 14, 2024 (89 FR 41908). The NPRM was prompted by a new revision to the airworthiness limitations (AWLs) of the maintenance planning document (MPD) and the damage tolerance rating (DTR) Check Form Document. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to retain the requirements of AD 2012-07-06 and revise the existing maintenance or inspection program by incorporating the information in Subsection B, Airworthiness Limitations-Structural Inspections and Subsection C, Airworthiness Limitations-Structural Safe-Life Limits, of 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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since the NPRM Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued the NPRM, Boeing published Section 9, Airworthiness Limitations (AWLs) and Certification Maintenance Requirements (CMRs), D622W001-9, Revision April 2023, 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 April 2023, which contain new and more restrictive airworthiness limitations (inspections and life limits have been updated). The FAA has determined it is necessary to mandate those airworthiness limitations. Airplanes with an original airworthiness certificate or original export certificate of airworthiness issued on or after September 5, 2024, must comply with the airworthiness limitations specified as part of the approved type design and referenced on the type certificate data sheet; this proposed AD therefore does not include those airplanes in the applicability. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received a comment from FedEx Express who supported the NPRM without change. The FAA received additional comments from four commenters, including American Airlines (AAL), Boeing, Japan Airlines (JAL), and United Airlines (UAL). The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Update the Document to the Latest Revision</HD> JAL and UAL requested that the proposed AD be revised to change the reference to the December 2022 versions of the airworthiness limitation documents cited in the proposed AD. JAL and UAL noted that Section 9, Airworthiness Limitations (AWLs) and Certification Maintenance Requirements (CMRs), D622W001-9, Revision April 2023, 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 April 2023, are already published. UAL stated that this change will simplify the implementation process for operators by removing the need for a new alternative method of compliance (AMOC) to implement the latest MPD revision. UAL stated it has already been working toward implementing the April 2023 revision, even before release of the NPRM. The FAA agrees with the request. As previously stated, the FAA has determined it is necessary to mandate the new airworthiness limitations specified in the Revision April 2023 AWLs documents because the inspections and life limits have been updated. The FAA has revised this proposed AD accordingly. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Add a Compliance Time for New Parts</HD> JAL requested that a compliance time for new parts, similar to the statement in paragr ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━