Airworthiness Directives; ATR-GIE Avions de Transport Régional Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-2416; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00491-T; Amendment 39-22999; AD 2025-06-11]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; ATR—GIE Avions de Transport Régional Airplanes</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain ATR—GIE Avions de Transport Régional Model ATR42-500 and ATR72-212A airplanes. This AD was prompted by a report of the possible use of improper material during the manufacturing of vertical stabilizer to horizontal stabilizer junction fittings. This AD requires inspections of affected parts, applicable repairs, and eventual replacement of certain affected parts, as specified in a European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) AD, which is incorporated by reference. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This AD is effective May 2, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of May 2, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">AD Docket:</E> You may examine the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2416; 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 final rule, the mandatory continuing airworthiness information (MCAI), any comments received, and other information. The address for Docket Operations is 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">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For EASA material identified in this 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> • 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-2024-2416 <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Shahram Daneshmandi, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; telephone 206-231-3220; email <E T="03">shahram.daneshmandi@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The FAA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to amend 14 CFR part 39 by adding an AD that would apply to certain ATR—GIE Avions de Transport Régional Model ATR42-500 and ATR72-212A airplanes. The NPRM published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on November 1, 2024 (89 FR 87311). The NPRM was prompted by AD 2024-0171, dated August 27, 2024, issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union (EASA AD 2024-0171) (also referred to as the MCAI). The MCAI states that a report was received of the possible use of improper material during the manufacturing of vertical stabilizer to horizontal stabilizer junction fittings. Subsequent review identified the population of affected parts and the airplanes equipped with those affected parts. Vertical stabilizer to horizontal stabilizer junction fittings manufactured with improper material, if not addressed, could reduce the structural integrity of the airplane. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require inspections of affected parts, applicable repairs, and eventual replacement of certain affected parts, as specified in EASA AD 2024-0171. The FAA is issuing 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-2024-2416. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received no comments on the NPRM or on the determination of the cost to the public. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conclusion</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 reviewed the relevant data and determined that air safety requires adopting this AD as proposed. Accordingly, the FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on this product. Except for minor editorial changes, this AD is adopted as proposed in the NPRM. None of the changes will increase the economic burden on any operator. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> EASA AD 2024-0171 specifies procedures for a special detailed inspection (SDI) (conductivity measurement, hardness test, and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) inspection) to determine the material tolerance of affected vertical to horizontal stabilizer junction fittings installed on group 1 or 2 airplanes; repair of parts not within the tolerances of material AL7075-T73 (except those within the tolerances of material AL7050-T7452); repetitive detailed visual inspections for any damage (including corrosion and dents) of each affected part that is within the tolerances of material AL7050-T7452 or is installed on a group 3 airplane; repair of damaged parts; and eventual replacement of any affected part that is within the tolerances of material AL7050-T7452 or installed on a group 3 airplane. EASA AD 2024-0171 also specifies reporting the inspection results of the SDI to ATR. 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">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD affects 36 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s100,10C,r50,xs90"> <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">Up to 26 work-hours × $85 per hour = $2,210</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>Up to $2,210</ENT> <ENT>Up to $79,560.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA estimates the following costs to do any necessary on-condition actions that would be required based on the results of any required actions. The FAA has no way of determining the number of aircraft that might need these on-condition actions: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s100,10C,16C"> <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 523 work-hours × $85 per hour = $44,455</ENT> <ENT>$6,340</ENT> <ENT>$50,795</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA has received no definitive data on which to base the cost estimates for the on-condition repairs specified in this AD. The FAA has included all known costs in its cost estimate. According to the manufacturer, however, some or all of the costs of this AD may be covered under warranty, thereby reducing the cost impact on affected operators. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Paperwork Reduction Act</HD> A federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, nor shall a person be subject to a penalty for failure to comply with a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act unless that collection of information displays a currently valid OMB Control Number. The OMB Control Number for this information collection is 2120-0056. Public reporting for this collection of information is estimated to take approximately 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. All responses to this collection of information are mandatory. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to: Information Collection Clearance Officer, Federal Aviation Administration, 10101 Hillwood Parkway, Fort Worth, TX 76177-1524. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Authority for This Rulemaking</HD> Title 49 of the United States Code specifies the FAA's authority to issue rules on aviation safety. Subtitle I, section 106, describes the authority of the FAA Administrator. Subtitle VII: Aviation Programs, describes in more detail the scope of the Agency's authority. The FAA is issuing this rulemaking under the authority described in Subtitle VII, Part A, Subpart III, Section 44701: General requirements. Under that section, Congress charges the FAA with promoting safe flight of civil aircraft in air commerce by prescribing regulations for practices, methods, and procedures the Administrator finds necessary for safety in air commerce. This regulation is within the scope of that authority because it addresses an unsafe condition that is likely to exist or develop on products identified in this rulemaking action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Findings</HD> This AD will not have federalism implicatio ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━