Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0916; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00119-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) 2024-10-13, which applies to all Airbus Helicopters Model AS332C, AS332C1, AS332L, AS 332L1, AS 332L2, and EC 225LP helicopters. AD 2024-10-13 requires visually inspecting the bowls of the left-hand (LH) and right-hand (RH) fuel filters for any cracks and seepage. Depending on the inspection results, AD 2024-10-13 requires removing an affected fuel filter from service and replacing that part. AD 2024-10-13 also allows a certain fuel filter to be installed on any helicopter if certain actions are accomplished. Since the FAA issued AD 2024-10-13, additional inspection criteria was developed. This proposed AD would require the same actions as AD 2024-10-13 but would remove some helicopters from the applicability, add an inspection of the inner surface of the fuel filter bowls, and revise the tightening torque. 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 17, 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-2025-0916; 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 European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) material identified in this proposed AD, contact EASA, Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer 3, 50668 Cologne, Germany; phone: +49 221 8999 000; email: <E T="03">ADs@easa.europa.eu;</E> website: <E T="03">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-2025-0916. • 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Deep Gaurav, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (817) 228-3731; email: <E T="03">deep.gaurav@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 using a method listed under the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-0916; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00119-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 Deep Gaurav, 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 2024-10-13, Amendment 39-22759 (89 FR 56189, July 9, 2024) (AD 2024-10-13), for all Airbus Helicopters Model AS332C, AS332C1, AS332L, AS 332L1, AS 332L2, and EC 225LP helicopters. AD 2024-10-13 was prompted by MCAI originated by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. EASA issued AD 2023-0095, dated May 8, 2023 (EASA AD 2023-0095), to address cracks on the fuel filter bowls due to over-torquing. AD 2024-10-13 requires visually inspecting the bowls of the LH and RH fuel filters for cracks and seepage and, depending on the inspection results, removing an affected fuel filter from service and replacing that part. AD 2024-10-13 also allows certain fuel filters to be installed on a helicopter if certain actions are accomplished. The FAA issued AD 2024-10-13 to prevent failure of the bowl, in-flight shutdown, and subsequent reduced control of the helicopter. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2024-10-13 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2024-10-13, EASA superseded EASA AD 2023-0095 and issued EASA AD 2024-0045, dated February 16, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0045) (also referred to as “the MCAI”). The MCAI states new cases of fuel filter cracks were reported on helicopters that had been inspected as required by EASA AD 2023-0095. The new cracks were located on the inner surface of the fuel filter bowls and likely resulted from excessive bowl tightening torque. Following an investigation, Airbus Helicopters expanded the scope of the inspection of the fuel filters to include the inner surface of the bowls and revised the tightening torque. This condition, if not addressed, could result in failure of the fuel filter bowl, in-flight shutdown of both engines, and consequent reduced control of the helicopter. 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-2025-0916. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2024-0045, which species procedures for a one-time inspection of the outer and inner surfaces of the bowls of the LH and RH fuel filters for cracks and seepage. Depending on the inspection results, EASA AD 2024-0045 specifies procedures for replacing an affected part with a serviceable part. EASA AD 2024-0045 allows credit for the inspection for certain helicopters and also allows certain fuel filters to be installed on a helicopter if they have been inspected and no defects found. 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 NPRM 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">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require the same actions as AD 2024-10-13 but would remove some helicopters from the applicability, add an inspection of the inner surface of the fuel filter bowls, and revise the tightening torque. This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2024-0045, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. See “Differences Between this AD and the MCAI” for a general discussion of these differences. <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 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━