Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0614; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00008-R; Amendment 39-23010; AD 2025-07-08]</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; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all Airbus Helicopters Model AS332C, AS332C1, AS332L, and AS332L1 helicopters. This AD results from a report of the loss of the tail rotor pitch control due to a fracture of the tail rotor slide of the tail rotor head (TRH) assembly. This AD requires inspecting the slide of the control plate of the TRH assembly for any score, scratch, crack, or corrosion, removing corrosion and replacing the TRH assembly, slide of the control plate, or pitch control assembly if discrepancies are found, and reporting the results of the inspection. This AD prohibits installing an affected TRH assembly unless the actions of this AD are accomplished. All of these actions are 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 April 25, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of April 25, 2025. The FAA must receive comments on this AD by May 27, 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-2025-0614; 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 street address for Docket Operations is listed above. <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 Pkwy., 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-2025-0614. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Evan Weaver, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (316) 944-8910; email: <E T="03">evan.p.weaver@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 data, views, or arguments about this final rule. Send your comments to an address listed under <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-0614; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00008-R” at the beginning of your comments. The most helpful comments reference a specific portion of the final rule, 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 final rule 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 final rule. <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 AD 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 AD, 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 AD. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Evan Weaver, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590. 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> EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, has issued EASA AD 2025-0001, dated January 6, 2025 (EASA AD 2025-0001) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on Airbus Helicopters Model AS 332 C, AS 332 C1, AS 332 L, AS 332 L1 helicopters. The MCAI states there was a report of the loss of the tail rotor pitch control on an AS 332 L1 helicopter. An investigation discovered a fracture of the tail rotor slide of the TRH assembly. Due to their similarity in type design to the Model AS332L1 helicopters in the affected area, the FAA determined that the unsafe condition could also exist or develop on Airbus Helicopters Model AS332C, AS332C1, and AS332L helicopters. The unsafe condition, if not addressed, could result in structural failure of the TRH assembly and reduced or loss of control of the helicopter. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0614. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> EASA AD 2025-0001 specifies procedures for inspecting the slide of the control plate of the TRH assembly for any score, scratch, crack, or corrosion. Depending on the results of the inspection and the configuration of the helicopter (PRE MOD 0766205 OR POST MOD 0766205), EASA AD 2025-0001 specifies to remove corrosion and replace an affected part (TRH assembly as defined in EASA AD 2025-0001) with one repaired by Airbus Helicopters, replace the slide of the control plate of the TRH pitch assembly, or replace the pitch control assembly. Additionally, if any discrepancy is detected during the inspection, EASA AD 2025-0001 specifies reporting the results of the inspection to Airbus Helicopters. Lastly, EASA AD 2025-001 specifies that it is allowed to install an affected part on a helicopter provided that the affected part passes an inspection. 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> These products have been approved by EASA and are approved for operation in the United States. Pursuant to the FAA's bilateral agreement with the European Union, EASA has notified the FAA about the unsafe condition described in its AD. The FAA is issuing this AD after evaluating all known relevant information and determining that the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop on other products of the same type design. <HD SOURCE="HD1">AD Requirements</HD> This AD requires accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2025-0001, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Interim Action</HD> The FAA considers this AD to be an interim action. The manufacturer is currently investigating the root cause of the unsafe condition identified in this AD. If final action is later identified, the FAA might consider further rulemaking to address this unsafe condition. <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, EASA AD 2025-0001 will be incorporated by reference in this FAA final rule. This AD therefore, requires compliance with EASA AD 2025-0001 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD. Using common terms that are the same as the heading of a particular section in EASA AD 2025-0001 does not mean that operators need comply only with that section. For example, where the AD requirement refers to “all required actions and compliance times ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━