Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0925; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00671-T]</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> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA proposes to supersede Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2022-18-01, which applies to certain Airbus SAS Model A330-200 series airplanes, A330-200 Freighter series airplanes, A330-300 series airplanes, Model A330-800 series airplanes, and A330-900 series airplanes. AD 2022-18-01 requires revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. Since the FAA issued AD 2022-18-01, the FAA has determined that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations are necessary. This proposed AD would require revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. 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 proposed AD by July 31, 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: Go to 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-2025-0925; 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; 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> It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0925. • 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Emma Copeland, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 847-294-8068; email: <E T="03">emma.m.copeland@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-2025-0925; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00671-T” 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 Emma Copeland, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 847-294-8068; email: <E T="03">emma.m.copeland@faa.gov.</E> Any commentary that the FAA receives that 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 2022-18-01, Amendment 39-22152 (87 FR 54355, September 6, 2022) (AD 2022-18-01), for certain Airbus SAS Model A330-200 series airplanes, A330-200 Freighter series airplanes, A330-300 series airplanes, A330-800 series airplanes, and A330-900 series airplanes. AD 2022-18-01 was prompted by an MCAI originated by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. EASA issued AD 2021-0246, dated November 17, 2021 (EASA AD 2021-0246) (which corresponds to FAA AD 2022-18-01), to correct an unsafe condition. AD 2022-18-01 requires revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. The FAA issued AD 2022-18-01 to address fatigue cracking, accidental damage, or corrosion in principal structural elements, and possible failure of certain life-limited parts, which could result in reduced structural integrity of the airplane. This proposed AD would supersede AD 2022-18-01. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2022-18-01 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2022-18-01, EASA superseded AD 2021-0246R1, dated October 12, 2022 (which superseded EASA AD 2021-0246), and issued EASA AD 2024-0213, dated November 14, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0213) (also referred to as the MCAI), for all Airbus SAS Model A330-200 series airplanes, A330-200 Freighter series airplanes, A330-300 series airplanes, A330-800 series airplanes, and A330-900 series airplanes. The MCAI states that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations have been developed. Airplanes with an original airworthiness certificate or original export certificate of airworthiness issued after October 1, 2024, must comply with the airworthiness limitations specified as part of the approved type design and referenced on the type certificate data sheet; this proposed AD therefore does not include those airplanes in the applicability. The FAA is proposing this AD to address fatigue cracking, accidental damage, or corrosion in principal structural elements, and possible failure of certain life-limited parts. The unsafe condition, if not addressed, could result in reduced structural integrity of the airplane. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0925. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2024-0213. This material specifies new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations for airplane structures and safe life limits. This proposed AD would also require EASA AD 2021-0246, which the Director of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> approved for incorporation by reference as of October 11, 2022 (87 FR 54355, September 6, 2022). 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 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 referenced above. The FAA is issuing this NPRM after determining that the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would retain certain requirements of AD 2022-18-01. This proposed AD would also require revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate additional new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations, which are specified in EASA AD 2024-0213 already described, as proposed for incorporation by reference. Any differences with EASA AD 2024-0213 are identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. This proposed AD would require revisions to certain operator maintenance documents to include new actions ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> inspections). Compliance with these actions is required by 14 CFR 91.403(c). For airplanes that have been previously modified, altered, or repaired in the areas addressed by this proposed AD, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━