Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0479; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00436-T]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS 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) 2016-14-03, which applies to all Airbus SAS Model A319-111, -112, -113, -114, -115, -131, -132, and -133 airplanes; Model A320-211, -212, -214, -231, -232, and -233 airplanes; and Model A321-111, -112, -131, -211, -212, -213, -231, and -232 airplanes. AD 2016-14-03 requires reinforcing the forward pressure bulkhead at a certain stringer on both the left-hand and right-hand sides and doing related investigative and corrective actions if necessary. Since the FAA issued AD 2016-14-03, new crack findings have prompted the need for repetitive inspections of the area. This proposed AD would continue to require the actions in AD 2016-14-03, add repetitive inspections of structure at a certain frame and applicable corrective actions, provide a terminating action for the repetitive inspections, and remove airplanes from the applicability, as specified in a European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) 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 May 12, 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-2025-0479; 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; telephone +49 221 8999 000; email <E T="03">ADs@easa.europa.eu;</E> website <E T="03">easa.europa.eu.</E> You may find this material on the EASA website at <E T="03">ad.easa.europa.eu.</E> It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0479. • 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> Nicholas Benson, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3647; email: <E T="03">nicholas.h.benson@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-2025-0479; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00436-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 Nicholas Benson, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3647; email: <E T="03">nicholas.h.benson@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 2016-14-03, Amendment 39-18584 (81 FR 44496, July 8, 2016) (AD 2016-14-03), for all Airbus SAS Model A319-111, -112, -113, -114, -115, -131, -132, and -133 airplanes; Model A320-211, -212, -214, -231, -232, and -233 airplanes; and Model A321-111, -112, -131, -211, -212, -213, -231, and -232 airplanes. AD 2016-14-03 was prompted by an MCAI originated by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. EASA issued AD 2014-0209, dated September 19, 2014, to correct an unsafe condition. AD 2016-14-03 requires reinforcing the forward pressure bulkhead at a certain stringer on both the left-hand and right-hand sides and doing related investigative and corrective actions if necessary. The FAA issued AD 2016-14-03 to prevent fatigue cracking of the forward pressure bulkhead, which could result in reduced structural integrity of the airplane. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2016-14-03 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2016-14-03, EASA superseded AD 2014-0209, dated September 19, 2014, and issued EASA AD 2024-0147R1, dated August 7, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0147R1) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition for certain Airbus SAS Model A318-111, -112, -121, -122 airplanes; Model A319-111, -112, -113, -114, -115, -131, -132, and -133 airplanes; Model A320-211, -212, -214, -215, -216, -231, -232, and -233 airplanes; and Model A321-111, -112, -131, -211, -212, -213, -231, and -232 airplanes. Model A320-215 airplanes are not certificated by the FAA and are not included on the U.S. type certificate data sheet; this proposed AD therefore does not include those airplanes in the applicability. The MCAI states that after EASA AD 2014-0209 was issued, several findings of cracks were reported in service during application of Airworthiness Limitation Item (ALI) tasks 532166 and 533186. As a result of these findings, Airbus has developed different thresholds and inspection requirements compared to those specified in ALI tasks 532166 and 533186; and requires those inspections until a modification is done. EASA AD 2014-0209, dated September 19, 2014 applied to all airplanes of the identified airplane models. EASA AD 2024-0147R1 removes airplanes on which certain Airbus modifications were embodied in production or in service. The FAA is proposing this AD to prevent cracking of the forward center bulkhead. The unsafe condition, if not addressed, could result in reduced structural integrity of the fuselage. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0479. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Explanation of Retained Requirements</HD> Although this proposed AD does not explicitly restate the requirements of AD 2016-14-03, this proposed AD would retain all requirements of AD 2016-14-03. Those requirements are referenced in EASA AD 2024-0147R1, which, in turn, is referenced in paragraph (g) of this proposed AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> EASA AD 2024-0147R1 specifies procedures for repetitive inspections for cracking of the airplane structure at frame (FR) 35 and stringer (STGR) 30 on the left-hand and right-hand sides for Airbus SAS Model A318, Model A319, and Model A320 airplanes; and at FR 35.8 and STGR 30 on the left-hand and right-hand sides for Airbus SAS Model A321 airplanes. EASA AD 2024-0147R1 also specifies obtaining and following instructions for crack repair. EASA AD 2024-0147R1 specifies that accomplishment of that inspection on an airplane terminates ALI tasks 532166 and task 533186 requirements. EASA AD 2024-0147R1 also specifies procedures for modifying the forward pressure bulkhead at the frame coupling on the left-hand and right-hand sides of FR 35 and STGR 30, including applicable related investigative and corrective actions, for Airbus SAS Model A318, Model A319, and Model A320 airplanes; and at FR 35.8 and STGR 30 for Airbus SAS Model A321 airplanes. EASA AD 2024-0147R1 specifies that this modification const ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━