Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-2419; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00366-R]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters</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 all Airbus Helicopters (Airbus) Model AS350B, AS350B1, AS350B2, AS350B3, AS350BA, AS350D, AS355E, AS355F, AS355F1, AS355F2, AS355N, AS355NP, EC130B4, and EC130T2 helicopters. This proposed AD was prompted by a manufacturer assessment that determined additional actions are necessary to improve particle detection for main gearboxes (MGBs) with certain planet gear bearings installed. This proposed AD would require repetitively inspecting the MGB bevel wheel for the presence of particles, repetitively inspecting the MGB magnetic plug for particles, and prohibit installing an affected MGB unless certain requirements are met. These actions are specified in a European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) AD, which is proposed for incorporation by reference. 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 NPRM by December 20, 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-2024-2419; 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 EASA AD, any comments received, and other information. The street address for Docket Operations is listed above. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For EASA material identified in this proposed AD, contact EASA, Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer 3, 50668 Cologne, Germany; phone: +49 221 8999 000; email: <E T="03">ADs@easa.europa.eu;</E> website: <E T="03">easa.europa.eu.</E> You may find the EASA material on the EASA website at <E T="03">ad.easa.europa.eu.</E> • You may view this material at the FAA, Office of the Regional Counsel, Southwest Region, 10101 Hillwood Pkwy., Room 6N-321, Fort Worth, TX 76177. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. The EASA material is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2419. <E T="03">Other Related Material:</E> For Airbus material identified in this proposed AD, contact Airbus Helicopters, 2701 North Forum Drive, Grand Prairie, TX 75052; phone: (972) 641-0000 or (800) 232-0323; fax: (972) 641-3775; or at <E T="03">airbus.com/en/products-services/helicopters/hcare-services/airbusworld.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dan McCully, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Ave., Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (404) 474-5548; email: <E T="03">william.mccully@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-2024-2419; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00366-R” 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 Dan McCully, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Ave., Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (404) 474-5548; email: <E T="03">william.mccully@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> EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, has issued EASA AD 2023-0044, dated February 28, 2023, (EASA AD 2023-0044) to correct an unsafe condition on Airbus Model AS 350 B, AS 350 D, AS 350 B1, AS 350 B2, AS 350 BA, AS 350 BB, AS 350 B3, EC 130 B4, EC 130 T2, AS 355 E, AS 355 F, AS 355 F1, AS 355 F2, AS355 N, and AS355 NP helicopters. EASA advises that after a fleet design review for detection of particles in the MGB, it was determined that additional maintenance actions are necessary to improve detection of particles in the MGB. The FAA is proposing this AD to detect and correct the presence of particles in the MGB, which if not addressed, could result in reduced or loss of control of the helicopter. You may examine EASA AD 2023-0044 in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2419. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> EASA AD 2023-0044 requires repetitive borescope visual inspections of the bevel wheel of the affected MGB for particles, collecting and analyzing any found particles, and depending on the results, further actions, accomplishing corrective action in accordance with the ASB defined within, or contacting AH [Airbus Helicopters] for further corrective action. EASA AD 2023-0044 also requires accomplishing a borescope visual inspection of the bevel wheel of the affected MGB for particles following the detection of any particles at the MGB magnetic plug during accomplishment of certain maintenance tasks and depending on the results, taking corrective action. Lastly, EASA AD 2023-0044 prohibits installing an affected MGB on any helicopter unless it is a serviceable part as defined within and certain requirements are met. 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 the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Other Related Material</HD> The FAA reviewed Airbus Alert Service Bulletin No. AS350-05.01.04, No. AS355-05.00.87, and No. EC130-05A040, each Revision 0, and each dated January 25, 2023. This material specifies procedures for borescope inspecting the MGB bevel wheel for particles and, depending on the results, replacing a damaged epicyclic module or bevel reduction module with an airworthy part, and collecting the particles using a vacuum pump and analyzing the particles. <HD SOURCE="HD1">FAA's Determination</HD> These helicopters have been approved by EASA and are approved for operation in the United States. Pursuant to the FAA's bilateral agreement with the European Union, EASA has notified the FAA about the unsafe condition described in its AD. The FAA is proposing this AD after evaluating all known relevant information and determining that the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop on other helicopters of these same type designs. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2023-0044, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD and except as discussed under “Differences Between this Proposed AD and EASA AD 2023-0044.” This proposed AD would require certain actions within compliance times specified in certain material referenced for compliance in EASA AD 2023-0044, particularly for corrective actions for scales, flakes, or splinters. Depending on the measurements of the scales, flakes, or splinters, corrective actions include close monitoring, metallurgical analysis within 50 hours time-in-serivce, or removing each affected module and additional actions when certain criteria are exceeded. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Explanation of Required Compliance Information</HD> In the FA ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━