Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0739; Project Identifier AD-2025-00196-T]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA proposes to adopt a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all The Boeing Company Model 717-200 airplanes. This proposed AD was prompted by a report of a nose landing gear-up landing caused by the failure of the upper lock link assembly. This proposed AD would require repetitive inspections for cracking of the upper lock link assembly and applicable on-condition actions. The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The FAA must receive comments on this proposed AD by June 13, 2025. </DATES> <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 regulations.gov under Docket No. FAA-2025-0739; 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 NPRM, any comments received, and other information. The street address for Docket Operations is listed above. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For the Boeing material identified in this proposed AD, contact Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Attention: Contractual & Data Services (C&DS), 2600 Westminster Blvd., MC 110-SK57, Seal Beach, CA 90740-5600; telephone 562-797-1717; website <E T="03">myboeingfleet.com</E> . • You may view this material at the FAA, Airworthiness Products Section, Operational Safety Branch, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call 206-231-3195. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0739. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Wayne Ha, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 562-627-5238; email: <E T="03">wayne.ha@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 relevant data, views, or arguments about this proposal. Send your comments to an address listed under the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-0739; Project Identifier AD-2025-00196-T” at the beginning of your comments. The most helpful comments reference a specific portion of the proposal, 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 proposal 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 NPRM. <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 NPRM 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 NPRM, 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 NPRM. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Wayne Ha, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 562-627-5238; email: <E T="03">wayne.ha@faa.gov</E> . 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 has received a report indicating a Boeing Model 717-200 operator experienced a nose landing gear-up landing. During approach, the flightcrew received an unsafe gear indication, the two main landing gear deployed, but the nose landing gear (NLG) stayed retracted. An alternative landing gear extension was attempted, but the NLG stayed in the up position, and the airplane landed with the NLG retracted. A report released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) identified that a failure of the upper lock link assembly caused the lower lock link assembly to swing down to a vertical position which contacted the NLG assembly. The contact restricted the movement of the NLG and prevented it from moving out of the retracted position. The root cause of the upper lock link assembly failure was found to be non-conforming surface roughness, due to tool marks on the surface. This condition, if not addressed, could result in failure of the NLG to fully extend during landing or cause the nose gear to remain retracted while the main gear deploys. Additionally, this condition could restrict ground maneuverability, increasing the risk of a runway excursion. <HD SOURCE="HD1">FAA's Determination</HD> The FAA is issuing this NPRM 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">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Boeing Alert Requirements Bulletin 717-32A0043 RB, dated February 12, 2025. This material specifies procedures for repetitive eddy current high frequency (ETHF) inspections of the top and bottom surfaces of the upper lock link assembly for any crack, and replacement of any cracked upper lock link assembly with a serviceable upper lock link assembly. This material also specifies that replacement of the upper lock link assembly terminates the repetitive inspections. 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">Proposed AD Requirements in this NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in the material already described, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. For information on the procedures and compliance times, see this material at regulations.gov under Docket No. FAA-2025-0739. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD, if adopted as proposed, would affect 117 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this proposed AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,r50,r25,r25,r50"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Action</CHED> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> Cost on U.S. operators </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Eddy current high frequency inspection</ENT> <ENT>5 work-hours × $85 per hour = $425 per inspection cycle</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>$425 per inspection cycle</ENT> <ENT>$49,725 per inspection cycle.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA estimates the following costs to do any necessary replacement that would be required based on the results of the proposed inspection. The agency has no way of determining the number of aircraft that might need these replacements: <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,r40,12,12"> <TTITLE>On-Condition Costs</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Action</CHED> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> <ENT>9 work-hours × $85 per hour = $765</ENT> <ENT>$17,819</ENT> <ENT>$18,584</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <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> The FAA determined that this proposed AD would not have federalism implications under Executive Order 13132. This proposed AD would not hav ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━