Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-2411; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00874-R; Amendment 39-22981; AD 2025-05-09]</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all Airbus Helicopters Model SA330J helicopters. This AD was prompted by the determination that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations are necessary. This AD requires revising the existing maintenance records by incorporating new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations, 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 9, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of May 9, 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-2024-2411; 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 EASA AD, 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; 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 Parkway, Room 6N-321, Fort Worth, TX 76177. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2411. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Adam Hein, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (316) 946-4116; email: <E T="03">Adam.Hein@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 all Airbus Helicopters Model SA330J helicopters. The NPRM published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on October 24, 2024 (89 FR 84836). The NPRM was prompted by EASA AD 2023-0146, dated July 14, 2023 (EASA AD 2023-0146), issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. EASA advises that airworthiness limitations and certification maintenance instructions are identified as mandatory for continued airworthiness and that Revision 7 of SA 330 J Maintenance Program—PUMA 330 J Airworthiness Limitations 5.99, Edition 2, date code 06-22, has been issued to specify all service life limits and maintenance tasks for SA 330 J helicopters and separate the airworthiness limitations from the Master Servicing Recommendations Manual (P.R.E.). According to EASA, failure to accomplish these instructions could result in an unsafe condition. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require revising the existing maintenance records by incorporating new or more restrictive actions and associated thresholds and intervals, including any life limits, specified in EASA AD 2023-0146, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD and except as discussed under “Differences Between this AD and the EASA AD.” You may examine EASA AD 2023-0146 in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2411. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from the University of Virginia Aviation Club, which supported the NPRM without change. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conclusion</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 its AD referenced above. The FAA reviewed the relevant data, considered the comments received, and determined that air safety requires adopting the AD as proposed, Except for minor editorial changes, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> correcting the Joint Aircraft System Component title from “Main Gearbox Oil Cooler” to “Rotorcraft Cooling Fan System”. and any other changes described previously, this AD is adopted as proposed in the NPRM. None of the changes will increase the economic burden on any operator. Accordingly, the FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2023-0146, which requires replacing components before exceeding their life limits and accomplishing maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals specified in the ALS as defined within. Depending on the results of the maintenance tasks, EASA AD 2023-0146 requires accomplishing corrective action(s) or contacting AH [Airbus Helicopters] for approved instructions and accomplishing those instructions. EASA AD 2023-0146 also requires revising the Aircraft Maintenance Programme (AMP) by incorporating the limitations, tasks, and associated thresholds and intervals described in the specified ALS, as applicable. Revising the AMP constitutes terminating action for the requirement to record accomplishment of the actions of replacing components before exceeding their life limits and to record accomplishment of maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals specified in the applicable ALS as required by EASA AD 2023-0146 for demonstration of AD compliance on a continued basis. 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">Differences Between This AD and the EASA AD</HD> EASA AD 2023-0146 requires, as individual tasks, replacing certain components before exceeding applicable life limits, accomplishing certain maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals as specified in the ALS, as defined within, and depending on the results, accomplishing corrective action, whereas this AD does not. EASA AD 2023-0146 also requires revising the approved AMP by incorporating the limitations, tasks, and associated thresholds and intervals described in that ALS within 12 months, whereas this AD requires revising the existing maintenance records by incorporating the limitations, tasks, and associated thresholds and intervals described in that ALS within 30 days, and clarifies that if the initial instance of an incorporated limitation or threshold therein is reached before 30 days after the effective date of this AD, you still have up to 30 days after the effective date of this AD to accomplish the corresponding task. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD affects 6 helicopters of U.S. registry. Labor rates are estimated at $85 per work-hour. Based on these numbers, the FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD. Revising the existing maintenance records takes approximately 1 work-hour, for an estimated cost of $85 per helicopter and $510 for the U.S. fleet. <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 implications under Executive Order 13132. This AD will not have a substantial direct effect on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government. For the reasons discussed above, I certify that this AD: (1) Is not a “significant regulatory action” under Executive Order 12866, (2) Will not affect intrastate aviation in Alaska, and (3) Will not have a significant economic impact, positive or negative, on a substantial number of small entities under the criteria of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. <LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HED">List of Subjects in 14 CFR Part 39</HD> Air transportation, Aircraft, Aviation safety, Incorporation by referenc ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━