Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0909; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00895-R]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters</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) 2019-19-13, which applies to certain Airbus Helicopters Model EC225LP helicopters. AD 2019-19-13 requires determining the total hours time-in-service (TIS) of the free wheel shafts of certain main rotor gearboxes (MGBs), replacing the MGB or right-hand side (RH) free wheel shaft, installing placard(s), and revising the Rotorcraft Flight Manual (RFM) for the helicopter. Since the FAA issued AD 2019-19-13, an additional part-numbered MGB has been identified to have the same unsafe condition and the FAA determined that additional changes are necessary. This proposed AD would require the actions of AD 2019-19-13 and, expand the applicability by adding the additional part-numbered MGB, change the requirement to determine the total hours TIS of a certain free wheel shaft, require repetitive replacement of the MGB or the RH free wheel shaft, change the requirements for who can replace parts, and expand the parts installation limitation conditions. 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 NPRM by July 7, 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-2025-0909; 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">Other Related Material:</E> For the Airbus Helicopters material identified in this proposed AD, contact Airbus Helicopters, 2701 North Forum Drive, Grand Prairie, TX 75052; phone: (972) 641-0000 or (800) 232-0323; fax: (972) 641-3775; website: <E T="03">airbus.com/en/products-services/helicopters/hcare-services/airbusworld.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Frank Huynh, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (404) 983-2588; email: <E T="03">frank.huynh@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-2025-0909; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00895-R” 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 the 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 Frank Huynh, 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> The FAA issued AD 2019-19-13, Amendment 39-19749 (84 FR 56109, October 21, 2019) (AD 2019-19-13), for Airbus Helicopters Model EC225LP helicopters, with a MGB part number (P/N) 332A325001.XX, 332A325002.XX, or 332A325003.XX, with a main reduction gear module (main module), and with a certain modification installed. AD 2019-19-13 was prompted by European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) AD No. 2019-0152-E, dated June 28, 2019 (EASA AD 2019-0152-E), issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, to correct an unsafe condition for Airbus Helicopters Model EC 225 LP helicopters. AD 2019-19-13 requires determining the total hours TIS of each free wheel shaft and depending on the calculation, replacing the MGB with an airworthy MGB or replacing the RH free wheel shaft. AD 2019-19-13 also requires installing placard(s) in full view of both pilots and revising the RFM for the helicopter with one engine inoperative (OEI) OEI training procedures pertaining to the “TRAINING IDLE” switches. As an option, AD 2019-19-13 specifies installing alternate MGB configurations that would constitute terminating action for the requirements of AD 2019-19-13. The FAA issued AD 2019-19-13 to detect and prevent wear of the ramps of the RH side free wheel shaft. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2019-19-13 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2019-19-13, EASA issued EASA AD 2023-0148, dated July 19, 2023 (EASA AD 2023-0148) (also referred to as the MCAI), to supersede EASA AD 2019-0152-E. The MCAI states that since EASA AD 2019-0152-E was issued, it was determined that an additional part-numbered MGB is potentially affected by the same unsafe condition and expanded the affected parts by adding MGB P/N 332A32-5004-00 with main module P/N 332A32-5400-00 installed. Additionally, the FAA has determined that repetitive replacement of the MGB is necessary and is requiring repetitive replacement of the MGB or the RH free wheel shaft at the 1,000 total hours TIS threshold. The FAA is also updating the actions that require replacing certain parts under the supervision of a qualified Airbus Helicopter Specialist by removing the requirement for the specified specialist since the actions must be accomplished by persons authorized under 14 CFR 43.3. The FAA has also changed the information that specifies availability of an example of the placard required by this proposed AD. Further, the FAA expanded the parts installation limitation conditions. Lastly, this NPRM uses an updated format; as a result, paragraph identifiers have changed. Finally, the FAA removed the requirement to determine the total hours TIS of the left-hand (LH) free wheel shaft. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0909. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments to AD 2019-19-13</HD> After AD 2019-19-13 was published, the FAA received a comment from one commenter. The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to the comment. The commenter stated the FAA AD is not in line with the intention of the Airbus Helicopters Alert Service Bulletin or the EASA AD. Specifically, the commenter stated the restriction that required the use of the RH free wheel shaft total hours TIS if the LH and RH free wheel shaft hours are different is not listed by Airbus or applied by EASA. Furthermore, the commenter stated, there are cases where the LH free wheel shaft has higher hours TIS than the RH free wheel shaft and the helicopter is “still flying as long as the RH Free wheel is under 1000 TSI”. The FAA infers the commenter is requesting that the FAA remove all required actions involving the LH free wheel shaft from the NPRM. The FAA agrees and has removed all wording involving the LH free wheel shaft from this NPRM. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Related Material</HD> The FAA reviewed Airbus Helicopters Emergency Alert Service Bulletin No. EC225-04A016, Revision 4, dated June 19, 2023, which specifies procedures for determining the total hours TIS of the free wheel shafts, a life limit schedule, and procedures for replacing the MGB or RH free wheel shaft, and installing one or two labels (placards) in view of both pilots about OEI training procedures. <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 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━