Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-1116; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00708-R; Amendment 39-23071; AD 2025-13-05]</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> Final rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all Airbus Helicopters Model H160-B helicopters. This AD was prompted by occurrences of premature in-service degradation of the main rotor swashplate assembly (swashplate) bearing. This AD requires repetitively inspecting the swashplate bearing for the presence of grease, and depending on the inspection results, performing corrective actions. This AD requires performing certain operational checks, downloading and analyzing certain data, and, depending on the results of the operational checks, further corrective actions. This AD also requires repetitively performing one flight under specific conditions. Additionally, this AD requires inspecting grease on the swashplate bearing and, depending on the inspection results, applying a certain grease or replacing the grease. This AD allows installing certain part-numbered swashplate bearings provided certain requirements are met. 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 July 17, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in this AD as of July 17, 2025. The FAA must receive comments on this AD by August 18, 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-2025-1116; 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. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) material identified in this 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 the EASA 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-2025-1116. • 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> Aryanna Sanchez, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (817) 222-4058; email: <E T="03">aryanna.t.sanchez@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 to an address listed under the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-1116; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00708-R” 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 Aryanna Sanchez, 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 2024-0229, dated December 2, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0229) (also referred to as the MCAI) to correct an unsafe condition on Airbus Helicopters Model H160-B helicopters. The MCAI states multiple occurrences were reported of premature in-service degradation of the swashplate bearing, which could have been due to the use of the wrong grease or a mixture of incompatible greases. The MCAI also states the health usage monitoring system (HUMS) has been effective to detect early degradation of the swashplate bearings; however, data shows that additional inspections and repetitive flights are needed to ensure HUMS data is analyzed on a regular basis to detect the degradation. The FAA is issuing this AD to prevent premature swashplate bearing degradation. The unsafe condition, if not addressed, could result in failure of the swashplate bearing and consequent reduced control of the helicopter. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-1116. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2024-0229, which specifies procedures for: • repetitively inspecting the swashplate assembly and surrounding areas for the presence of black grease, and if abnormal grease is detected, performing corrective actions. Corrective actions include performing a functional test of the swashplate bearing and, depending on the results, replacing the main rotor mast assembly or repeating the functional tests. • performing a check of the HUMS flight report and a check of the condition of the HUMS vibration overlimit monitoring operation, including downloading and analyzing the HUMS data of the swashplate bearing. If a discrepancy is detected, the MCAI specifies to contact AH [Airbus Helicopters] for corrective actions. • repetitively performing one flight under specific conditions to verify the status of the HUMS vibration overlimit monitoring. • identifying the type of grease that was applied during the last swashplate bearing lubrication and if incorrect grease was applied or if the grease is unknown, replacing it. EASA AD 2024-0229 allows an affected swashplate bearing to be installed on a helicopter provided the swashplate bearing is new and has not previously been installed on a helicopter. 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 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 accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2024-0229, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD. See “Differences Between this AD and the MCAI” for a discussion of the general differences included in this AD. The owner/operator (pilot) holding at least a private pilot certificate may perform the initial check of the HUMS flight report or repetitively perform one flight to verify the status of the HUMS vibration overlimit monitoring and must enter compliance with the applicable paragraph(s) of the AD into the helicopter maintenance records in accordance with 14 CFR 43.9(a) and 91.417(a)(2)(v). The pilot may perform these ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 32k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━