Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0473; Project Identifier AD-2024-00281-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> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA proposes to supersede Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2018-26-03, which applies to all The Boeing Company Model 757-200 series airplanes. AD 2018-26-03 requires, for the Captain's and First Officer's seats, repetitive horizontal actuator identifications, repetitive checks of the horizontal movement system (HMS), a detailed inspection of the HMS, as applicable, and applicable on-condition actions. AD 2018-26-03 also requires a general visual inspection to determine the seat part numbers of the Captain's and First Officer's seats, a cable adjustment check on seats with certain seat part numbers, and applicable on-condition actions. Since the FAA issued AD 2018-26-03, the FAA has determined that additional seats are affected by the unsafe condition. This proposed AD would retain the actions required by AD 2018-26-03 and add an inspection for previously omitted part numbers. 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 May 15, 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-2025-0473; 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, 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 identified 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-2025-0473. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Courtney Tuck, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3986; email: <E T="03">Courtney.K.Tuck@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-2025-0473; Project Identifier AD-2024-00281-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 the 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 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 Courtney Tuck, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3986; email: <E T="03">Courtney.K.Tuck@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 2018-26-03, Amendment 39-19533 (83 FR 66612, December 27, 2018) (AD 2018-26-03), for all The Boeing Company Model 757-200 series airplanes. AD 2018-26-03 was prompted by reports of uncommanded movement of the Captain's and First Officer's seats. AD 2018-26-03 requires, for the Captain's and First Officer's seats, repetitive horizontal actuator identifications, repetitive checks of the HMS, a detailed inspection of the HMS, as applicable, and applicable on-condition actions. AD 2018-26-03 also requires a general visual inspection to determine the seat part numbers of the Captain's and First Officer's seats, a cable adjustment check on seats with certain seat part numbers, and applicable on-condition actions. The agency issued AD 2018-26-03 to address uncommanded movement of the Captain's and First Officer's seat, which could lead to reduced controllability of the airplane. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2018-26-03 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2018-26-03, Boeing and the seat supplier (Ipeco) determined that certain seat part numbers were inadvertently omitted from the service information required by AD 2018-26-03. Ipeco subsequently updated their service information to include the additional part numbers, and Boeing updated their service information as well. Based on this, the FAA has determined that additional seats are affected by the unsafe condition. In addition, the effectivity of Boeing Special Attention Service Bulletin 757-25-0308, Revision 2, dated June 12, 2023; and Boeing Special Attention Service Bulletin 757-25-0309, Revision 2, dated June 12, 2023; are limited to The Boeing Company Model 757-200 series airplanes having certain line numbers. However, the applicability of this proposed AD includes all The Boeing Company Model 757-200 series airplanes. Because the affected parts are rotable parts, the FAA has determined that these parts could later be installed on airplanes that were initially delivered with acceptable parts, thereby subjecting those airplanes to the unsafe condition. <HD SOURCE="HD1">FAA's Determination</HD> The FAA is issuing this NPRM after determining that the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop on other products of the same type design. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Boeing Special Attention Service Bulletin 757-25-0308, Revision 2, dated June 12, 2023. This material specifies procedures for repetitive horizontal actuator identifications, repetitive checks of the HMS, a detailed inspection of the HMS, as applicable, and applicable on-condition actions including an overhaul and checks of the HMS, with the option to install a serviceable seat under certain conditions, which terminates the repetitive checks. The FAA reviewed Boeing Special Attention Service Bulletin 757-25-0309, Revision 2, dated June 12, 2023. This material specifies procedures for a general visual inspection to determine the seat part numbers on the Captain's and First Officer's seats, and, for seats with certain part numbers, a manual override cable adjustment check of the Captain's and First Officer's seats, and applicable on-condition actions including moving the adjustment nut, tightening the lock nut, and readjusting the control lever. This proposed AD would also require Boeing Special Attention Service Bulletin 757-25-0308, Revision 1, dated June 7, 2018, which the Director of the Federal Register approved for incorporation by reference as of January 31, 2019 (83 FR 66612, December 27, 2018). 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">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> Although this proposed AD does not explicitly restate the requirements of AD 2018-26-03, this proposed AD would retain all of the requirements of AD 2018-26-03. Those requirements are referenced in the material identified previously, which, in turn, is referenced in paragraphs (g) and (h) of this proposed AD. This proposed AD would retain all of the requirements of AD 2018-26-03 and add actions for certain airp ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━