Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-2541; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00006-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 certain Airbus Helicopters Model SA341G and SA342J helicopters. This proposed AD was prompted by a report of a pilot collective pitch stick handle grip that broke when pulled. This proposed AD would require replacing certain pilot collective pitch stick handle grips and prohibit installing those pilot collective pitch stick handle grips. 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> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The FAA must receive comments on this NPRM by January 13, 2025. </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-2024-2541; 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 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Hye Yoon Jang Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (206) 231-3758; email: <E T="03">Hye.Yoon.Jang@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-2024-2541; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00006-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 Hye Yoon Jang, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (206) 231-3758; email: <E T="03">Hye.Yoon.Jang@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 2023-0002, dated January 5, 2023 (EASA AD 2023-0002) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on Airbus Helicopters Model SA 341 G and SA 342 J (Gazelle) helicopters if equipped with a pilot collective pitch stick having part number (P/N) 341A27-5041-0057, P/N 341A27-5041-0058, P/N 341A27-5041-0060, P/N 341A27-5041-0063, P/N 341A27-5041-0064, P/N 341A27-5041-0066, P/N 341A27-5041-0067, or P/N 341A27-5041-0068. The MCAI states that a pilot collective pitch stick handle grip broke into two pieces when a maintenance technician pulled the handle grip during helicopter maintenance. According to the MCAI, following investigation and analysis, the handle grip material (Rilsan) is sensitive to aging, with consequent degradation of the structural strength of the handle grip. The FAA is proposing this AD to prevent failure of the handle grip, which if not addressed, could result in reduced integrity of the flight control system and subsequent loss of control of the helicopter. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2541. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> EASA AD 2023-0002 requires replacing handle grips P/N 41A27-1377-00 installed on pilot collective pitch sticks before June 15, 2022, and replacing certain part-numbered pilot collective pitch sticks complete with a handle grip. EASA AD 2023-0002 also prohibits installing the affected handle grips and pilot collective pitch sticks equipped with an affected handle grip on any helicopter. 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">FAA's Determination</HD> These products have been approved by the aviation authority of another country and are 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 on other products 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 2023-0002, 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 NPRM and the MCAI.” <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 EASA AD 2023-0002 by reference in the FAA final rule. This proposed AD would, therefore, require compliance with EASA AD 2023-0002 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. Using common terms that are the same as the heading of a particular section in EASA AD 2023-0002 does not mean that operators need comply only with that section. For example, where the AD requirement refers to “all required actions and compliance times,” compliance with this AD requirement is not limited to the section titled “Required Action(s) and Compliance Time(s)” in EASA AD 2023-0002. Material referenced in EASA AD 2023-0002 for compliance will be available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2541 after the FAA final rule is published. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Differences Between This NPRM and the MCAI</HD> The MCAI requires using Airbus Helicopters ASB SA341 67.06 and ASB SA342 67.06 (co-published as one document and referred to as ASB No. “GAZ-67.06”), Revision 0, dated June 15, 2022, for compliance, and allows using future revisions of that material, whereas this proposed AD would instead require using Airbus Helicopters ASB No. GAZ-67.06, Revision 1, dated November 2, 2022, and allows using future revisions of that material as specified in the Ref. Publications section of ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━