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-2025-0743; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00711-R; Amendment 39-23024; AD 2025-09-03]</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 superseding Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2021-24-09, which applied to certain Bell Textron Canada Limited Model 430 helicopters. AD 2021-24-09 required a visual inspection of the main rotor (M/R) pitch link clevis (clevis), rod end, and a certain part-numbered universal bearing, performing a purge grease, and performing a magnetic particle inspection of each M/R clevis, and depending on the inspection results, removing or replacing certain parts and performing additional actions. AD 2021-24-09 also required recurring inspections of each M/R clevis and each universal bearing. Since the FAA issued AD 2021-24-09, the manufacturer has reduced the life limits of the affected parts and introduced new M/R pitch link assemblies by re-identifying the M/R pitch link assemblies that were required to be inspected by AD 2021-24-09. This AD requires similar actions as AD 2021-24-09 but reduces the life limits and requires replacing the M/R pitch link assemblies with re-identified part numbered assemblies. These actions are 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-2025-0743; 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> You may find the Transport Canada material on the Transport Canada website at <E T="03">tc.canada.ca/en/aviation.</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-2025-0743. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Alexis Whitaker, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 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-2025-0743; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00711-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> The FAA issued AD 2021-24-09, Amendment 39-21830 (86 FR 66158, November 22, 2021) (AD 2021-24-09), for Bell Textron Canada Limited Model 430 helicopters, serial numbers 49001 through 49129, inclusive. AD 2021-24-09 was prompted by an MCAI originated by Transport Canada, which is the aviation authority for Canada. Transport Canada issued AD CF-2021-26, dated July 26, 2021 (Transport Canada AD CF-2021-26) to address an in-flight failure of an M/R clevis, which resulted in loss of control of the helicopter and fatal injuries to occupants. AD 2021-24-09 required a visual inspection of the M/R clevis, rod end, and a certain part-numbered universal bearing, performing a purge grease, and performing a magnetic particle inspection of each M/R clevis. Depending on the visual inspection and magnetic particle inspection results, AD 2021-24-09 required removing certain parts from service, replacing certain parts, and performing additional actions. AD 2021-24-09 also required recurring inspections of each M/R clevis and each universal bearing. The FAA issued AD 2021-24-09 to detect and address any wear and damage of the M/R clevis neck or threaded area, which could lead to crack initiation at the M/R clevis neck and failure of the M/R pitch link, resulting in loss of control of the helicopter. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2021-24-09 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2021-24-09, Transport Canada superseded Transport Canada AD CF-2021-26 and issued Transport Canada AD CF-2024-40, dated December 3, 2024 (Transport Canada AD CF-2024-40) (also referred to after this as “the MCAI”). The MCAI states that Bell Textron Canada Limited has revised Chapter 4, Airworthiness Limitations Section (ALS) of the Model 430 helicopter maintenance manual. Rather than having an airworthiness life assigned to the M/R pitch link assembly, Bell Textron Canada Limited has assigned individual life limits on the M/R clevises, universal bearings, universal to pitch link bolts, the tube assembly, and the rod end assembly. Bell Textron Canada Limited also revised its service information, which specifies re-identifying M/R pitch link assemblies from part number (P/N) 430-010-411-105 and P/N 430-010-411-107, which were required to be inspected by AD 2021-24-09, to P/N 430-010-411-109 and P/N 430-010-411-111, respectively. According to the MCAI, the unsafe condition, if not addressed, could lead to crack initiation at the M/R clevis neck or threaded area and failure of the M/R pitch link, which 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-2025-0743. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Transport Canada AD CF-2024-40, which specifies procedures for verifying rotorcraft historical records to determine the total accumulated hours air time of certain parts, replacing the M/R pitch link assembly components that have exceeded their life limit, re-identifying the M/R pitch link assemblies, and performing a detailed visual inspection of the pitch link tube assembly, rod end assembly, and universal pitch link bolt. Transport Canada AD CF-2024-40 also requires performing repetitive detailed visual inspections of the M/R clevises and universal bearings (including hardware). Depending on the inspection results, Transport Canada CF-2024-40 specifies replacing any part that does not meet inspection criteria or further corrective actions. Additionally, Transport Canada AD CF-2024-40 specifies performing a purge grease of each universal bearing and performing a magnetic particle ins ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━