Special Conditions: Northwest Aerospace Technologies, Inc (NAT), Boeing Model 787-9 Airplane; Installation of High Wall Suites

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 25</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-0988; Special Conditions No. 25-869-SC]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Special Conditions: Northwest Aerospace Technologies, Inc (NAT), Boeing Model 787-9 Airplane; Installation of High Wall Suites</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final special conditions. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> These special conditions are issued for the Boeing Model 787-9 series airplanes. These airplanes, as modified by NAT, 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 the installation of high wall suites in the passenger cabin. The applicable airworthiness regulations do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for this design feature. These 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> Effective October 17, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Artiom Kostiouk, Cabin Safety, AIR-624, Technical Policy Branch, Policy and Standards Division, Aircraft Certification Service, Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC 20591; telephone and fax (202) 267-5446; email <E T="03">artiom.m.kostiouk@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> NAT has applied for an amended supplemental type certificate for the installation of suites in the passenger cabin in Boeing Model 787-9 series airplanes. The Boeing Model 787-9 airplane, currently approved under Type Certificate No. T00021SE, is a twin-engine transport category airplane, with a maximum seating capacity for 420 passengers, and a maximum take-off weight of 553,000 pounds. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Type Certification Basis</HD> Under the provisions of 14 CFR 21.101, NAT must show that the Boeing Model 787-9 airplane, as changed, continues to meet the applicable provisions of the regulations listed in Type Certificate No. T00021SE 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">i.e.,</E> 14 CFR part 25) do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for the Boeing Model 787-9 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 Boeing Model 787-9 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 Boeing Model 787-9 airplane will incorporate the following novel or unusual design feature: Single-passenger suites with high walls that diminish occupant's awareness of their surroundings in emergency situations. These suites are considered a novel design for transport category airplanes and were not considered when applicable airworthiness standards were created. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion</HD> For the Model 787-9 airplane, NAT has proposed a customer option for the installation of six high wall suites (HWS) arranged in two rows of three suites each in a 1-1-1 configuration. The characteristics of this HWS design are unique such that the suite walls are higher than conventional mini-suites with partial height surroundings. While the walls for these suites do not extend fully up from the floor to the ceiling, such as those found in traditional “high wall” suites, their wall height of 60 inches is greater than the eye level of a 5th percentile female, impeding visual awareness and egress. These suites are also not remote from the main cabin (such as overhead crew rests). Additionally, the design of these suites is novel in the inclusion of berths that are accessible to the occupant of the suite during flight, unlike previous high wall suite designs. Part 25 in its current form does not have regulations that address suite installations in the cabin with walls of height that reduce occupant visibility and situational awareness. Due to the novel design features of these HWS, suitable passenger alerting, supplemental oxygen, and firefighting equipment and procedures are needed for this configuration to ensure occupant awareness in emergency situations. Furthermore, the proposed suite design necessitates the development of additional special conditions, including, but not limited to crew procedures for managing hazards and suite occupants, as well as maintaining cabin-egress route dimensions after deformation of the walls and seats. The 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">Discussion of Comments</HD> The FAA issued Notice of Proposed Special Conditions No. 25-24-03-SC for the Boeing Model 787-9 series airplane, which was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on August 6, 2024 (89 FR 63845). The FAA received three comments from Boeing. Boeing requests to change the description of the suites to remove the single criterion of impending visual awareness and egress of a 5th percentile female. Instead, Boeing requests FAA to use multifaceted criteria ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> oxygen masks, smoke detection, and firefighting), which would categorize the suites as mini-suites instead of high wall suites. Boeing further asserts that a height of 60 inches to demarcate between high wall suites and mini-suites is not consistent with industry, FAA, or European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) practice. The FAA disagrees that the proposed suites are mini-suites. These suites are described as high wall suites because the height of the walls, in this case 60 inches, exceeds the eye height of shorter stature occupants such that they are unable to see the emergency exits from within the suites, which increases safety risk associated with actions expected of the occupants in an emergency. This description is consistent with the FAA Grant of Exemption 17635B, issued to The Boeing Company for high wall suites installed on Model 777 airplanes which states, “In most previous approvals, the low-wall mini-suite door did not obscure the passenger's view of the airplane's emergency exit. However, in this case, the high walls create long corridors that could obscure view of the emergency exits, and impede the overall egress capability of the cabin, creating a new safety risk.” This description is also consistent with discussion of high wall suites at industry meetings where the FAA has maintained the position discussed in the noted exemption. Boeing also proposes to change the discussion section regarding part 25 which states that part 25 does not specifically address suites with walls that reduce occupant visibility and situational awareness. Boeing asserts that commercial aircraft commonly include architectural elements that are addressed by existing regulations that may also potentially reduce visibility and situational awareness. The FAA infers that Boeing is maintaining that existing regulations already address suites with high walls, and the FAA disagrees with Boeing's comment. While current regulations are sufficient to address a high wall architectural element such as a partition, they do not address the safety risk posed by surrounding an occupant with high walls. The discussion section is intended to convey that part 25 did not previously consider safety factors associated with high walls surrounding seats that were previously installed in an open seating environment. Among these factors is the safety risk associated with walls that diminish visibility of emergency exits and awareness of emergency conditions, which must be addressed by special conditions. Finally, Boeing proposes to remove conditions 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7, which are associated with high wall suites, and place condition 5 which relates to berths, in an exemption regarding mini-suites. The FAA disagrees with Boeing's proposal since the suites in question are not mini-suites but high wall suites. Furthermore, incorporating beds into the suites requires conditions specific to decompression alerting and maintaining availability of supplemental oxygen for bed occupants to mitigate the safety risk associated with diminished situational awareness. The special conditions are adopted as proposed. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Applicability</HD> As discussed above, these special conditions are applicable to the Boeing Model 787-9 airplane. Should Northwest Aerospace Technologies, Inc apply at a later date for a supplemental type certificate to modify any other model included on Type Certificate No. T00021SE to incorporate the same novel or unusual design feature, these special conditions would apply to that model as ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 15k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━