Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0620; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00020-R; Amendment 39-23015; AD 2025-08-02]</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 certain Airbus Helicopters Model H160-B helicopters. This AD was prompted by reports of difficulty moving the locking fingers when applying the jettisoning function of the windows. This AD requires repetitively lubricating the locking fingers of each jettisonable window, performing an operational test, and depending on the results, performing corrective actions. 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 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. The FAA must receive comments on this AD by June 2, 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-2025-0620; 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 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-2025-0620. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Alexis Whitaker, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY; phone: (516) 228-7309; email: <E T="03">alexis.j.whitaker@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-2025-0620; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00020-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 Alexis Whitaker, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY. 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 2025-0009, dated January 10, 2025 (EASA AD 2025-0009) (also referred to as “the MCAI”), to correct an unsafe condition on Airbus Helicopters Model H160-B helicopters. The MCAI states that occurrences were reported where difficulty was experienced when applying the jettisoning function of the windows. The MCAI also states that subsequent investigation revealed that, in some occurrences, the effort needed to move the locking fingers from the locking position may be too high. The FAA is issuing this AD to prevent the failure of the jettisoning function of the window. The unsafe condition, if not addressed, could result in the inability to evacuate helicopter occupants during an emergency situation. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0620. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2025-0009, which specifies procedures for repetitive lubrication of the locking fingers on the jettisonable window systems, performing an operational test of the windows after each lubrication, and taking corrective actions in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. EASA AD 2025-0009 also allows installing affected parts on any helicopter provided that before installation the part is lubricated and tested. 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 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 about the unsafe condition described in the MCAI. The FAA is issuing this AD after determining that the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop on other products of this same type design. <HD SOURCE="HD1">AD Requirements</HD> This AD requires accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2025-0009, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD. <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 2025-0009 is incorporated by reference in this AD. This AD requires compliance with EASA AD 2025-0009 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD. Material required by EASA AD 2025-0009 for compliance will be available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0620 after this AD is published. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Differences Between This AD and the MCAI</HD> Where EASA AD 2025-0009 specifies contacting Airbus Helicopters for applicable corrective actions and instructions after performing an operational test, this AD requires using a repair method approved by the FAA, EASA, or Airbus Helicopters' EASA Design Organization Approval. Where EASA AD 2025-0009 applies to all Model H160-B helicopters, this AD applies to Model H160-B helicopters with certain jettisonable windows and parts installed. Where EASA AD 2025-0009 defines an affected part as a part identified in the original and any future revision of Airbus Helicopters Alert Service Bulletin H160-05-00-0001, this AD lists the affected parts by name and part number. The affected parts listed in this AD are the same as those identified in Airbus Helicopters Alert Service Bulletin ASB H160-05-00-0001, Issue 001, dated January 9, 2025. Where EASA AD 2025-0009 prohibits installing an affected part unless it has been lubricated and tested in accordance with the service information, this AD does not contain that prohibition. Since this AD applies to helicopters with an affected part ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━