Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Canada Limited Partnership (Type Certificate Previously Held by C Series Aircraft Limited Partnership (CSALP); Bombardier, Inc.) Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0206; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00525-T]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Canada Limited Partnership (Type Certificate Previously Held by C Series Aircraft Limited Partnership (CSALP); Bombardier, Inc.) Airplanes</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 Canada Limited Partnership Model BD-500-1A10 and BD-500-1A11 airplanes. This proposed AD was prompted by an investigation that showed a change in the feed-through connector O-ring material at a certain frame increased the electrical bonding resistance due to the current torque specification being inadequate. This proposed AD would require electrical bonding tests between the feed-through connectors and the forward side of the bulkhead at a certain frame, and the installation of two electrical bonding plates of connectors, as applicable, as specified in a Transport Canada AD, which is proposed for incorporation by reference (IBR). 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 proposed AD by April 7, 2025. </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-2025-0206; 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 Transport Canada material identified in this proposed AD, contact Transport Canada, Transport Canada National Aircraft Certification, 159 Cleopatra Drive, Nepean, Ontario K1A 0N5, Canada; telephone 888-663-3639; email <E T="03">TC.AirworthinessDirectives-Consignesdenavigabilite.TC@tc.gc.ca;</E> website <E T="03">tc.canada.ca/en/aviation.</E> It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0206. • 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steven Dzierzynski, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; telephone 516-228-7300; email <E T="03">9-avs-nyaco-cos@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-2025-0206; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00525-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 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 Steven Dzierzynski, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 91898; telephone 516-228-7300; email <E T="03">9-avs-nyaco-cos@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> Transport Canada, which is the aviation authority for Canada, has issued Transport Canada AD CF-2024-32, dated September 11, 2024 (Transport Canada AD CF-2024-32) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition for certain Airbus Canada Limited Partnership Model BD-500-1A10 and BD-500-1A11 airplanes. The MCAI states an Airbus Canada Limited Partnership investigation revealed a change in the feed-through connector O-ring material at frame (FR) 51 increased the electrical bonding resistance due to the current torque specification being inadequate, which may lead to electrical bonding levels which exceed allowable design limits, leaving the aircraft more susceptible to electromagnetic interference (EMI), high-intensity radiated fields (HIRF) and lightning strikes. The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0206. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> Transport Canada AD CF-2024-32 specifies procedures for electrical bonding tests to determine the resistance between the feed-through connectors and the forward side of the bulkhead at FR 51, and the installation of two electrical bonding plates if any connectors have more than the specified resistance. 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> This product has been approved by the aviation authority of another country and is 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 in other products of the same type design. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in Transport Canada AD CF-2024-32 described previously, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. <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 Transport Canada AD CF-2024-32 by reference in the FAA final rule. This proposed AD would, therefore, require compliance with Transport Canada AD CF-2024-32 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. Material required by Transport Canada AD CF-2024-32 for compliance will be available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0206 after the FAA final rule is published. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD, if adopted as proposed, would affect 36 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this proposed AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,10C,16C,20C"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs for Required Actions</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost per product</CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost on U.S. operators</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">23 work-hours × $85 per hour = $1,955</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>$1,955</ENT> <ENT>$70,380</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s100,r50,r50"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs of On-Condition Actions</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost per product</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Up to 20 work-hours × $85 per hour = $1,70 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━