Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0623; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00878-R; Amendment 39-23017; AD 2025-08-04]</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 AS332L helicopters. This AD was prompted by a determination that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations are necessary. This AD requires revising the airworthiness limitations section (ALS) of the existing maintenance manual (MM) or instructions for continued airworthiness (ICAs) and the existing approved maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, 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. 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-2025-0623; 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-2025-0623. <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">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-2025-0623; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00878-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 Adam Hein, 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 2023-0143, dated July 14, 2023 (EASA AD 2023-0143) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on Airbus Helicopters Model AS 332 L helicopters. The MCAI states that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations have been developed. EASA advises that airworthiness limitations and certification maintenance instructions are identified as mandatory for continued airworthiness and that Revision 9 of AH [Airbus Helicopters] AS 332 L ALS, dated July 27, 2022, has been issued to specify all service life limits and maintenance tasks for AS 332 L helicopters and separate the airworthiness limitations from the Master Servicing Manual (M.S.M.). The FAA is issuing this AD to prevent a failure of critical parts and primary structural components, which if not addressed could result in 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-2025-0623. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2023-0143, which specifies replacing components before exceeding their life limits and accomplishing all applicable maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals specified in the ALS as defined in EASA AD 2023-0143. Depending on the results of the maintenance tasks, EASA AD 2023-0143 specifies accomplishing corrective action(s) or contacting AH [Airbus Helicopters] for approved instructions and accomplishing those instructions. Additionally, EASA AD 2023-0143 specifies 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 accomplishing maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals specified in the applicable ALS as defined in EASA AD 2023-0143 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">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 of the unsafe condition described in the MCAI referenced 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 the actions specified in EASA AD 2023-0143, 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, the FAA incorporates EASA AD 2023-0143 by reference in the FAA final rule. This AD, therefore, requires compliance with EASA AD 2023-0143 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 2023-0143 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,” compliance with this AD requirement is not limited to the section titled “Required Action(s) and Compliance Time(s)” in EASA AD 2023-0143. Material referenced in EASA AD 2023-0143 for compliance will be available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0623 after the FAA final rule ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━