Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-2548; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00401-T; Amendment 39-23026; AD 2025-09-05]</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain Airbus SAS Model A318 series airplanes, Model A319-111, -112, -113, -114, -115, -131, -132, and -133 airplanes; Model A320-211, -212, -214, -216, -231, -232, and -233 airplanes; and Model A321-111, -112, -131, -211, -212, -213, -231, and -232 airplanes. This AD was prompted by cracks being found during full-scale fatigue testing of the keel beam bottom panel between the edge profile and stringer run-out at a certain frame and stringer. This AD requires repetitive special detailed inspections (SDI) of the affected area, and corrective actions, if necessary, 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 June 5, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of June 5, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">AD Docket:</E> You may examine the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2548; 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 address for Docket Operations is 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">Material Incorporated by Reference</E> : • For EASA material identified in this 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> • 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-2024-2548. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Timothy Dowling, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; telephone 206-231-3667; email <E T="03">Timothy.P.Dowling@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The FAA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to amend 14 CFR part 39 by adding an AD that would apply to certain Airbus SAS Model A318 series airplanes, Model A319-111, -112, -113, -114, -115, -131, -132, and -133 airplanes; Model A320-211, -212, -214, -216, -231, -232, and -233 airplanes; and Model A321-111, -112, -131, -211, -212, -213, -231, and -232 airplanes. The NPRM published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on December 9, 2024 (89 FR 97564). The NPRM was prompted by AD 2024-0135, dated July 10, 2024, issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union (EASA AD 2024-0135) (also referred to as the MCAI). The MCAI states that during full-scale fatigue testing, cracks were found on the keel beam bottom panel between the edge profile and stringer run-out at frame 46 and stringer 37, left- and right-hand sides. Crack propagation in this area could possibly result in reduced structural integrity of the airplane. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require repetitive SDIs of the affected area, and corrective actions, if necessary, as specified in EASA AD 2024-0135. 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-2024-2548. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) and United Airlines, who supported the NPRM without change. The FAA received an additional comment from American Airlines. The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Change to Paragraph (h)(3)</HD> American Airlines requested that paragraph (h)(3) of the proposed AD be updated to read: “Where paragraph (3) of EASA AD 2024-0135 does not allow corrective action as terminating action for the repetitive inspection requirements ‘unless otherwise stated in the repair instructions provide by Airbus,’ this AD requires that any terminating action be specified in repair instructions approved using a method approved by the Manager, AIR-520, Continued Operational Safety Branch, FAA; or EASA; or Airbus SAS's EASA Design Organization Approval (DOA). If approved by the DOA, the approval must include the DOA-authorized signature.” The commenter stated that this change would align paragraph (h)(3) of the proposed AD with paragraph (h)(2) of the proposed AD and still require proper approval for any terminating repair instructions, and would also reduce unnecessary duplicate Alternative Method of Compliance (AMOC) requests from operators if multiple airplanes have similar repair procedures accomplished. The FAA agrees to clarify. The FAA has determined that paragraph (h)(3) of the proposed AD was not clearly written. The intent of that exception is to specify that the “repair instructions” referenced in paragraph (3) of EASA AD 2024-0135 are the same repair instructions obtained as specified in paragraph (h)(2) of this AD. The FAA has revised paragraph (h)(3) of this AD to specify that the repair instructions are those obtained from the Manager, AIR- 520, Continued Operational Safety Branch, FAA; or EASA; or Airbus SAS's EASA DOA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conclusion</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 reviewed the relevant data, considered the comment received, and determined that air safety requires adopting this AD as proposed. Accordingly, the FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on this product. Except for minor editorial changes, and any other changes described previously, this AD is adopted as proposed in the NPRM. None of the changes will increase the economic burden on any operator. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> EASA AD 2024-0135 specifies procedures for repetitive SDIs for discrepancies (cracks) of the keel beam bottom panel between the edge profile and stringer run-out at frame 46 and stringer 37, left-hand and right-hand sides. EASA AD 2024-0135 also specifies corrective actions including crack repair. 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">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD affects 1,920 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,12C,12C,12C"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs for Required Actions</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Cost per product </CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost on U.S. operators</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">16 work-hours × $85 per hour = $1,360</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>$1,360</ENT> <ENT>$2,611,200</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA has received no definitive data on which to base the cost estimates for the on-condition repairs specified in this AD. <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> This AD will not have federalism implications under Executive Order 13132. This AD will not have a substantial direct effect on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government. For the reasons discussed above, I certify that this AD: (1) Is not a “significant regulatory action” under Executive Order 12866, (2) Will not affect intrastate aviation in Alaska, and (3) Will not have a sign ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━