Airworthiness Directives; Bell Textron Canada Limited Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0486; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00348-R; Amendment 39-23007; AD 2025-06-51]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Bell Textron Canada Limited 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 certain Bell Textron Canada Limited (Bell) Model 505 helicopters. The FAA previously sent this AD as an emergency AD to all known U.S. owners and operators of these helicopters. This AD was prompted by deformation and/or improper pin engagement in the knuckles of the door hinge on the aft movable ballast box assembly. This AD requires removing all ballast weights from the aft movable ballast box assembly and prohibits the use of ballast weights within the aft movable ballast box assembly, as specified in a Transport Canada emergency 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. Emergency AD 2025-06-51, issued on March 21, 2025, which contained the requirements of this amendment, was effective with actual notice. 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-2025-0486; 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 Transport Canada material identified in this AD, contact Transport Canada, Transport Canada National Aircraft Certification, 159 Cleopatra Drive, Nepean, Ontario K1A 0N5, Canada; phone: (888) 663-3639; email: <E T="03">TC.AirworthinessDirectives-Consignesdenavigabilite.TC@tc.gc.ca.</E> You may view this material on the Transport Canada website at <E T="03">tc.canada.ca/en/aviation.</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-2025-0486. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dan McCully, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (404) 474-5548; email: <E T="03">William.McCully@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 the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-0486; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00348-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 Dan McCully, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590. 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 Emergency AD 2025-06-51, dated March 21, 2025 (the emergency AD), to address an unsafe condition on Bell Model 505 helicopters, serial numbers 65011 and subsequent with ballast kit part number (P/N) SLS-706-201-007 installed. The FAA sent the emergency AD to all known U.S. owners and operators of these helicopters. The emergency AD requires removing all ballast weights from the aft movable ballast box assembly, P/N SLS-706-201-007, and prohibits the use of ballast weights within the aft movable ballast box assembly. The emergency AD was prompted by Emergency AD CF-2025-17, dated March 19, 2025 (Transport Canada Emergency AD CF-2025-17) (also referred to as “the MCAI”), issued by Transport Canada, which is the aviation authority for Canada. The MCAI states that Bell has discovered possible plastic deformation and/or improper pin engagement in the knuckles of the door hinge on the aft movable ballast box assembly, P/N SLS-706-201-007. Ballast weights escaping the ballast box have a high potential of striking the tail rotor assembly. The FAA is issuing this AD to prevent damage to and departure of tail rotor blades, loss of tail rotor thrust, and severe vibrations. Any of these conditions, if not addressed, will lead to 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-2025-0486. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Transport Canada Emergency AD CF-2025-17, which specifies procedures for removing all ballast weights from the aft movable ballast box assembly, P/N SLS-706-201-007, and prohibits the use of ballast weights within the aft movable ballast box assembly. 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> 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 described above. The FAA is issuing this AD 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">AD Requirements</HD> This AD requires accomplishing the actions specified in the MCAI, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Interim Action</HD> The FAA considers that this AD is an interim action. Bell is developing inspection procedures intended to address the unsafe conditions. Once this inspection is developed, approved, and available, the FAA might consider additional rulemaking. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Justification for Immediate Adoption and Determination of the Effective Date</HD> Section 553(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) (5 U.S.C. 551 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) authorizes agencies to dispense with notice and comment procedures for rules when the agency, for “good cause,” finds that those procedures are “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Under this section, an agency, upon finding good cause, may issue a final rule without providing notice and seeking comment prior to issuance. Further, section 553(d) of the APA authorizes agencies to make rules effective in less than thirty days, upon a finding of good cause. An unsafe condition exists that required the immediate adoption of Emergency AD 2025-06-51 issued on March 21, 2025, to all known U.S. owners and operators of these helicopters. The FAA found that the risk to the flying public justified waiving notice and comment prior to adoption of this rule because ballast weights escaping the ballast box have a high potential of striking the tail rotor ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━