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-2025-0740; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00775-R; Amendment 39-23022; AD 2025-09-01]</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 (BTCL) Model 505 helicopters. This AD was prompted by reports of possible chafing in certain locations between the basic and supplemental helicopter wiring and the structure. This AD requires repetitively inspecting the wire harnesses at certain locations for damage, and if any wire damage is found, repairing the damaged wire/bundles, as specified in a Transport Canada 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 13, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of May 13, 2025. The FAA must receive comments on this AD by June 12, 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-2025-0740; 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> website: <E T="03">tc.canada.ca/en/aviation.</E> You may find the Transport Canada material on the Transport Canada website at <E T="03">wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/Saf-Sec-Sur/2/cawis-swimn/ad_qs1.aspx.</E> • You may view this material at the FAA, Office of the Regional Counsel, Southwest Region, 10101 Hillwood Pkwy., 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-2025-0740. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michael Yeshiambel, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (316) 946-4133; email: <E T="03">michael.m.yeshiambel@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 <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-0740; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00775-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 Michael Yeshiambel, 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> Transport Canada, which is the aviation authority for Canada, has issued Transport Canada AD CF-2024-44, dated December 19, 2024 (Transport Canada AD CF-2024-44) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on certain serial-numbered BTCL Model 505 helicopters. The MCAI states that BTCL was made aware of possible harness chafing in certain locations between basic and supplemental helicopter wiring and the structure. Potential fouling occurs under the floor starting at the forward canted bulkhead station (STA) 65 to the aft bulkhead at STA 180, including all structural frames and areas in between (STA 65, 82, 98, 109, 127, 146, 155, and 180). Chafing of the subject wiring could lead to a short to ground, which would command the engine to idle and could result in loss of control of the helicopter. The MCAI also states that the AD is considered an interim action and further AD action will follow once a final corrective action has been released by BTCL. The MCAI requires repetitively inspecting the wire harnesses at specified locations for damage, and if any wire damage is found, repairing the damaged wire/bundles as specified in Transport Canada AD CF-2024-44. The FAA is issuing 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-2025-0740. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Transport Canada AD CF-2024-44, which specifies procedures for repetitively inspecting the wire harnesses at certain locations for damage, and if any wire damage is found, repairing the damaged wire/bundles. 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">Requirements of This AD</HD> This AD requires accomplishing the actions specified in the MCAI already described, 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, Transport Canada AD CF-2024-44 is incorporated by reference in this AD. This AD requires compliance with Transport Canada AD CF-2024-44 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD. Material required by Transport Canada AD CF-2024-44 for compliance will be available at <E T="03"> regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0740 after this AD is published. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Interim Action</HD> The FAA considers that this AD is an interim action. The manufacturer is currently developing a terminating action that will address the unsafe condition identified in this AD. Once the modification 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, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━