Extension of the Prohibition Against Certain Flights in the Kabul Flight Information Region (FIR) (OAKX)

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 91</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2023-1415; Amdt. No. 91-369B]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AM09</RIN> <SUBJECT>Extension of the Prohibition Against Certain Flights in the Kabul Flight Information Region (FIR) (OAKX)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This action extends the prohibition against certain flight operations in the Kabul Flight Information Region (FIR) (OAKX) by all: U.S. air carriers; U.S. commercial operators; persons exercising the privileges of an airman certificate issued by the FAA, except when such persons are operating U.S.-registered aircraft for a foreign air carrier; and operators of U.S.-registered civil aircraft, except when the operator of such aircraft is a foreign air carrier, for an additional three years, from July 25, 2025, to July 25, 2028. FAA finds this action necessary to address continuing risks to persons and aircraft engaged in such flight operations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective on July 1, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Bill Petrak, Flight Standards Service, through the Washington Operations Center, Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20591; telephone (202) 267-3203; email <E T="03">9-FAA-OverseasFlightProhibitions@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> This action extends the expiration date of Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) No. 119, title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR), 91.1619, from July 25, 2025, to July 25, 2028. SFAR No. 119, § 91.1619, prohibits certain flight operations in the Kabul FIR (OAKX) at altitudes below Flight Level (FL) 320, except to operate transiting overflights of the Kabul FIR (OAKX) on jet routes P500-G500 at altitudes at and above FL300, by all: U.S. air carriers; U.S. commercial operators; persons exercising the privileges of an airman certificate issued by the FAA, except when such persons are operating U.S.-registered aircraft for a foreign air carrier; and operators of U.S.-registered civil aircraft, except when the operator of such aircraft is a foreign air carrier. FAA finds this action necessary to address significant unacceptable safety-of-flight risks to U.S. civil aviation that continue to exist in the Kabul FIR (OAKX). FAA also republishes the approval process and exemption information for this flight prohibition SFAR, consistent with other recently published flight prohibition SFARs. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Authority and Good Cause</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Authority</HD> FAA is responsible for the safety of flight in the United States and for the safety of U.S. civil operators, U.S.-registered civil aircraft, and U.S.-certificated airmen throughout the world. Section 106(f) of title 49, U.S. Code (U.S.C.), subtitle I, establishes the FAA Administrator's authority to issue rules on aviation safety. Subtitle VII of title 49, Aviation Programs, describes in more detail the scope of the agency's authority. Section 40101(d)(1) provides that the Administrator shall consider in the public interest, among other matters, assigning, maintaining, and enhancing safety and security as the highest priorities in air commerce. Section 40105(b)(1)(A) requires the Administrator to exercise this authority consistently with the obligations of the U.S. Government under international agreements. FAA is promulgating this rule under the authority described in 49 U.S.C. 44701, General requirements. Under that section, FAA is charged broadly with promoting safe flight of civil aircraft in air commerce by prescribing, among other things, regulations and minimum standards for practices, methods, and procedures that the Administrator finds necessary for safety in air commerce and national security. This regulation is within the scope of FAA's authority because it continues to prohibit the persons described in paragraph (a) of SFAR No. 119, § 91.1619, from conducting certain flight operations in the Kabul FIR (OAKX) due to the continuing hazards to the safety of U.S. civil flight operations, as described in the preamble to this final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Good Cause for Immediate Adoption</HD> Section 553(b)(B) of title 5, U.S. Code, 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.” Also, section 553(d) permits agencies, upon a finding of good cause, to issue rules with an effective date less than 30 days from the date of publication. In this instance, FAA finds good cause to forgo notice and comment and the delayed effective date because they would be impracticable and contrary to the public interest. Providing notice and the opportunity for the public to comment here would be impracticable. FAA's flight prohibitions, and any amendments thereto, need to include appropriate boundaries that reflect the agency's current understanding of the risk environment for U.S. civil aviation. This allows FAA to protect the safety of U.S. operators' aircraft and the lives of their passengers and crews without over-restricting or under-restricting U.S. operators' routing options. However, the risk environment for U.S. civil aviation in airspace managed by other countries with respect to safety of flight is fluid in circumstances involving fighting, violent extremist and militant activity, or periods of heightened tensions, particularly where weapons capable of targeting or otherwise negatively affecting U.S. civil aviation are or may be present. This fluidity, and the potential for rapid changes in the risks to U.S. civil aviation, significantly limits how far in advance of a new or amended flight prohibition FAA can usefully assess the risk environment. The delay that would be occasioned by providing an opportunity to comment on this action would significantly increase the risk that the resulting final action would not accurately reflect the current risks to U.S. civil aviation associated with the situation and thus would not establish boundaries for the flight prohibition commensurate with those risks. While FAA sought and responded to public comments, the boundaries of the area in which unacceptable risks to the safety of U.S. civil aviation existed might change due to: evolving military or political circumstances; violent extremist and militant group activity; the introduction, removal, or repositioning of more advanced anti-aircraft weapon systems; or other factors. As a result, if the situation improved while FAA sought and responded to public comments, the rule FAA finalized might be over-restrictive, unnecessarily limiting U.S. operators' routing options and potentially causing them to incur unnecessary additional fuel and operations-related costs, as well as potentially causing passengers to incur unnecessarily some costs attributed to their time. Conversely, if the situation deteriorated while FAA sought and responded to public comments, the rule FAA finalized might be under-restrictive, allowing U.S. civil aviation to continue operating in areas where unacceptable risks to their safety had developed. Such an outcome would endanger the safety of these aircraft, as well as their passengers and crews, exposing them to unacceptable risks of death, injury, and property damage that could occur if a U.S. operator's aircraft were shot down (or otherwise damaged) while operating in the Kabul FIR (OAKX). Alternatively, if FAA made changes to the area in which U.S. civil aviation operations would be prohibited between a notice of proposed rulemaking and a final rule due to changed conditions, the version of the rule the public commented on would no longer reflect FAA's current assessment of the risk environment for U.S. civil aviation. In addition, seeking comment would be contrary to the public interest because some of the rational basis for the rulemaking is based upon classified information and controlled unclassified information. In order to provide comment on a proposal meaningfully, the public would need access to the basis for the agency's decision-making, which FAA cannot provide. Disclosing classified information or controlled unclassified information to seek meaningful comment on the proposal would harm the public interest. Accordingly, FAA meaningfully seeking comment on the proposal is contrary to the public interest. Therefore, providing notice and the opportunity for comment would be impracticable as it would hinder FAA's ability to maintain appropriate flight prohibitions based on up-to-date risk assessments of the risks to the safety of U.S. civil aviation operations in airspace managed by other countries. It also would be contrary to the public interest, as FAA cannot protect classified information and controlled unclassified information and meaningfully seek public comment. For the same reasons discussed above, the potential safety impacts and the need for prompt action on up-to-date information that is not public would make delaying the effective date impracticable and contrary to the public interest. Accordingly, FAA finds good cause exists to forgo notice and comment and any delay in the effective date for this rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> On August 30, 2021, FAA issued Notice To Airmen (NOTAM) KICZ A0029/21 to address the then-existing unacceptable risks to the safety of U.S. civil aviation operations in the Kabul FIR (OAKX) at all altitudes, except for transiting overflight operations on jet routes P500-G500. This ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 45k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━