Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0742; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00682-T]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS 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 supersede Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2020-02-14, which applies to certain Airbus SAS Model A350-941 and -1041 airplanes. AD 2020-02-14 requires a one-time inspection of the oxygen containers and adjacent panels and applicable corrective actions. Since the FAA issued AD 2020-02-14, it was determined that additional airplanes may be affected by the same unsafe condition. This proposed AD would continue to require the actions in AD 2020-02-14 and would require expanding the applicability to include additional airplanes, as specified in a European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) AD, which is proposed for incorporation by reference (IBR). The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The FAA must receive comments on this proposed AD by June 13, 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-2025-0742; 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, 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 Airbus material identified in this AD, contact Airbus SAS, Airworthiness Office—EAL, Rond-Point Emile Dewoitine No: 2, 31700 Blagnac Cedex, France; telephone +33 5 61 93 36 96; fax +33 5 61 93 45 80; email <E T="03">continued-airworthiness.a350@airbus.com</E> ; website <E T="03">airbus.com</E> . • For EASA material identified in this proposed AD, contact EASA, Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer 3, 50668 Cologne, Germany; telephone +49 221 8999 000; email <E T="03">ADs@easa.europa.eu</E> . You may find this material on the EASA website at <E T="03">ad.easa.europa.eu</E> . It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0742. • 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Nicole Tsang, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3959; email: <E T="03">Nicole.S.Tsang@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-2025-0742; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00682-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 regulations.gov, 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 Nicole Tsang, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3959; email: <E T="03">Nicole.S.Tsang@faa.gov</E> . 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> The FAA issued AD 2020-02-14, Amendment 39-19828 (85 FR 6757, February 6, 2020) (AD 2020-02-14), for certain Airbus SAS Model A350-941 and -1041 airplanes. AD 2020-02-14 was prompted by an MCAI originated by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. EASA issued AD 2019-0210, dated August 26, 2019 (EASA AD 2019-0210), to correct an unsafe condition. AD 2020-02-14 requires a one-time inspection of the oxygen containers and adjacent panels, and applicable corrective actions. The FAA issued AD 2020-02-14 to address damaged and unlocked fasteners of the oxygen containers and adjacent panels in the passenger supply channels (PSCs), which could result in insufficient clearance between the oxygen container and adjacent panels and prevent the opening of the oxygen containers, and consequent failure of the oxygen masks to deploy and provide supplemental oxygen in case of an in-flight decompression, possibly resulting in injury to cabin occupants. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2020-02-14 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2020-02-14, EASA superseded EASA AD 2019-0210 and issued EASA AD 2024-0220, dated November 20, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0220) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition for certain Airbus SAS Model A350-941 and -1041 airplanes. The MCAI states that since EASA AD 2019-0210 was issued, it was determined that additional A350 manufacturer serial numbers (airplanes) may be affected by the same unsafe condition. The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0742. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Explanation of Retained Requirements</HD> Although this proposed AD does not explicitly restate the requirements of AD 2020-02-14, this proposed AD would retain all of the requirements of AD 2020-02-14. Those requirements are referenced in EASA AD 2024-0220, which, in turn, is referenced in paragraph (g) of this proposed AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> EASA AD 2024-0220 specifies procedures for inspecting the oxygen containers and the installation of adjacent panels located in all PSCs, to check that each fastener of each panel/component is locked and to measure the clearance between the oxygen container door lid and the adjacent panel/component. EASA AD 2024-0220 also describes procedures for applicable corrective actions, including attaining minimum clearance, locking any unlocked fasteners, and replacing damaged parts. The FAA reviewed Airbus Alert Operators Transmission (AOT) A35P015-19, Revision 01, dated June 19, 2019. This material identifies affected airplanes for the Group 1 airplanes specified in EASA AD 2024-0220. The FAA also reviewed Airbus AOT A35P023-24, Revision 01, dated July 25, 2024. This material identifies affected airplanes for the Group 2 airplanes specified in EASA AD 2024-0220. 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 referenced above. The FAA is issuing this NPRM after determining that the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2024-0220 described previously, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed 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 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━