Airworthiness Directives; Cameron Balloons Ltd. Fuel Cylinders

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0921; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00442-Q; Amendment 39-23056; AD 2025-11-10]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Cameron Balloons Ltd. Fuel Cylinders</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 adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for Cameron Balloons Ltd. (Cameron) fuel cylinders fitted with certain pressure relief valve (PRV) adaptors on hot air balloons. This AD was prompted by the discovery of cracks on the upper hex portion of PRV adaptors. This AD requires repetitively visually checking the PRV adaptor for cracks and removing any fuel cylinder with a cracked PRV adaptor from service. 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 17, 2025. The FAA must receive comments on this AD 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-2025-0921; 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. <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 data, views, or arguments about this final rule. Send your comments using a method listed under the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-0921; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00442-Q” 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 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> The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which is the airworthiness authority for the United Kingdom (UK), has issued CAA UK Emergency AD G-2025-0001R1-E, dated April 11, 2025 (also referred to as “the MCAI”), to correct an unsafe condition on hot air balloons with Cameron fuel cylinders fitted with PRV adaptor part number (P/N) CB8426. The MCAI states that within the previous nine months, Cameron received three reports that fuel cylinders with PRV adaptor P/N CB8426 had cracks on the upper hex portion of the PRV adaptor. The MCAI further states that the cause of the failed adaptors is unknown, but likely due to a manufacturing or maintenance non-conformity issue. A cracked PRV adaptor could lead to uncontrolled leakage of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which could result in an in-flight fire and consequent emergency landing. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0921. <HD SOURCE="HD1">FAA's Determination</HD> These products have been approved by the civil 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, that authority has notified the FAA of the unsafe condition described in the MCAI and material referenced above. The FAA is issuing this AD 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">AD Requirements</HD> This AD requires repetitive visual checks of the fuel cylinder PRV adaptor for cracks, reporting any findings of a crack, and removing any fuel cylinder with a cracked PRV adaptor from service. The owner/operator (pilot) holding at least a private pilot certificate may perform the visual check and must enter compliance with the applicable paragraph(s) of the AD into the balloon maintenance records in accordance with 14 CFR 43.9(a) and 91.417(a)(2)(v). The pilot may perform this action because it only involves visually checking each PRV adaptor for cracks. This action could be performed equally well by a pilot or a mechanic. This is an exception to the FAA's standard maintenance regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Differences Between This AD and the MCAI</HD> The MCAI applies to hot air balloons and certain airships. This AD only applies to hot air balloons because the airships identified in the MCAI do not have an FAA type certificate. Although the MCAI specifies that if any fuel cylinder is found with a cracked PRV adaptor, it must be emptied of fuel prior to being removed from service, this AD does not require that action. While that action is encouraged for the general safety related to the leakage of LPG, it is not required to address the unsafe condition identified in this AD. This AD requires reporting to Cameron Balloons the results of each check if a crack is found, whereas the MCAI does not. The MCAI states in the “Reason” section that it requires reporting the results of the inspections because the cause of the failed adaptors is not known and inspection reports will help determine the extent of the failures in the affected fleet. However, the MCAI does not explicitly include a reporting requirement in the “Required Action(s) and Compliance Time(s)” section. The FAA infers that the MCAI intended to have this reporting as a required action to ensure proper corrective measures can be taken based on the gathered data, and therefore has included a reporting requirement in this AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Interim Action</HD> The FAA considers this AD to be an interim action. This unsafe condition is still under investigation by the manufacturer and, depending on the results of that investigation, the FAA may consider further rulemaking action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Justification for Immediate Adoption and Determination of the Effective Date</HD> Section 553(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) (5 U.S.C. 551 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) authorizes agencies to dispense with notice and comment procedures for rules when the agency, for “good cause,” finds that those procedures are “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Under this section, an agency, upon finding good cause, may issue a final rule without providing notice and seeking comment prior to issuance. Further, section 553(d) of the APA authorizes agencies to make rules effective in less than thirty days, upon a finding of good cause. An unsafe condition exists that requires the immediate adoption of this AD without providing an opportunity for public comments prior to adoption. The FAA has found that the risk to the flying public justifies forgoing notice and comment prior to adoption of this rule because an LPG leak on the fuel cylinder could result in an in-flight fire or explosion, damaging the hot air balloon and leading to a forced emergency landing, which could injure balloon occupants and persons on the ground. Additionally, the corrective actions must be accomplished before further flight and before each flight thereafter. Accordingly, notice and opportunity for prior public comment are impracticable and contrary to the public interest pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(b). In addition, the FAA finds that good cause exist ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━