Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0914; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00413-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 adopt a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain Airbus Helicopters Model AS 332L2 and EC 225LP helicopters. This proposed AD was prompted by reports of overlengthened and deformed attachment bolts installed on the link of the main gearbox (MGB) suspension bar attachment bracket. This proposed AD would require replacing certain attachment bolts on the MGB suspension bar fittings, inspecting the removed bolts, and reporting the results of this inspection to Airbus Helicopters. 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-2025-0914; 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> • 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-2025-0914. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> George Weir, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (817) 222-4045; email: <E T="03">george.a.weir@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-2025-0914; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00413-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 this 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 George Weir, 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> EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, has issued EASA AD 2024-0142, dated July 17, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0142) (also referred to as “the MCAI”), to correct an unsafe condition on Airbus Helicopters Model AS 332 L2 and EC 225 LP helicopters with a new link of MGB suspension bar attachment brackets installed under Airbus Helicopters modification 07.28496 (helicopters in production) or using certain Airbus Helicopters alert service bulletins (helicopters in service). The MCAI states that two attachment screws (bolts) were found overlengthened and deformed on helicopters having the new link of the MGB suspension bar attachment brackets. The MCAI further states the investigation is still ongoing and that collecting additional data to support the investigation is part of addressing the unsafe condition. The MCAI states that it is an interim action and further AD action may follow. The FAA is proposing this AD to prevent structural failure of the MGB suspension bar attachment bolts, which, if not addressed, could result in failure of an MGB attachment assembly, detachment of an MGB suspension bar, and consequent loss control of the helicopter. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0914. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> EASA AD 2024-0142 specifies procedures for replacing attachment screw part number 332A22-3644-20 with a part that is new (never been installed), inspecting the removed screws, and reporting the inspection results to Airbus Helicopters. The attachment screws are installed on the left-hand and right-hand rear MGB suspension bar fittings. Additionally, EASA AD 2024-0142 prohibits installing that part-numbered attachment screw on any helicopter unless it is installed in accordance with certain service instructions. 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 accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2024-0142, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed. See “Differences Between this AD and the MCAI” for a 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 FAA ADs. The FAA has been coordinating this process with manufacturers and CAAs. As a result, the FAA proposes to incorporate EASA AD 2024-0142 by reference in the FAA final rule. This proposed AD would, therefore, require compliance with EASA AD 2024-0142 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. Material referenced in EASA AD 2024-0142 for compliance will be available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0914 after the FAA final rule is published. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Differences Between This AD and the MCAI</HD> Where the material referenced in EASA AD 2024-0142 specifies contacting Airbus Helicopters for instructions if the difference between (L4) and (L3) is more than 1.6 mm (.063 in), this proposed AD would require using a repair method approved by the FAA, EASA, or Airbus Helicopters' EASA Design Organization Approval. Where EASA AD 2024-0142 prohibits installing an affected part unless it has been installed in accordance with certain service instructions, this proposed AD would not contain that prohibition. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Interim Action</HD> The FAA considers this proposed AD would be an interim action. The inspect ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━