Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-1702; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00067-T; Amendment 39-23076; AD 2025-13-10]</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is superseding Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2021-25-14, which applied to all Airbus SAS Model A319-111, -112, -113, -114, -115, -131, -132, and -133 airplanes; Model A320-211, -212, -214, -216, -231, -232, and -233 airplanes; and Model A321-111, -112, -131, -211, -212, -213, -231, and -232 airplanes. AD 2021-25-14 required repetitive inspections for cracking at the wing manhole access panel attachment holes at certain wing skin panels, and corrective action if necessary. Since the FAA issued AD 2021-25-14, new investigation results determined that additional airplanes are subject to the unsafe condition and certain structural repair manual (SRM) tasks should not be used to accomplish repairs. This AD continues to require the actions in AD 2021-25-14. This AD also changes the applicability to both add and remove airplane models, updates the compliance times, and prohibits the use of certain SRM tasks for repair. 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 August 14, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of August 14, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">AD Docket:</E> You may examine the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-1702; 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 address for Docket Operations is U.S. Department of Transportation, Docket Operations, M-30, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference</HD> • For European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) material identified in this 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> • 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. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-1702. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Timothy Dowling, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 817-222-5102; email: <E T="03">Timothy.P.Dowling@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The FAA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to amend 14 CFR part 39 to supersede AD 2021-25-14, Amendment 39-21858 (86 FR 72171, December 21, 2021) (AD 2021-25-14). AD 2021-25-14 applied to all Airbus SAS Model A319-111, -112, -113, -114, -115, -131, -132, and -133 airplanes; Model A320-211, -212, -214, -216, -231, -232, and -233 airplanes; and Model A321-111, -112, -131, -211, -212, -213, -231, and -232 airplanes. AD 2021-25-14 required repetitive inspections for cracking at the wing manhole access panel attachment holes at certain wing skin panels and corrective action if necessary. The FAA issued AD 2021-25-14 to address this unsafe condition, which could lead to crack propagation, possibly resulting in reduced structural integrity of the wings. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on July 3, 2024 (89 FR 55123). The NPRM was prompted by AD 2024-0027, dated January 25, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0027), issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. EASA AD 2024-0027 states new investigation results highlighted that inspections must be applied to all models of A319, A320, and A321 airplanes in an affected configuration, and the associated compliance time must be adapted to these configurations. It was determined that fatigue cracking may occur in affected areas on airplanes having Sharklets installed during production or in service. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to retain the actions of AD 2021-25-14 and to revise the applicability by adding new engine option (NEO) airplane models and removing Airbus SAS Model A321-111, -112, and -131 airplanes. The FAA also proposed to update the compliance times as specified in EASA AD 2024-0027. The FAA issued a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM) to amend 14 CFR part 39 to supersede AD 2021-25-14. The SNPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on February 13, 2025 (90 FR 9523). The SNPRM was prompted by EASA AD 2024-0230, dated December 2, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0230) (also referred to as “the MCAI”), which superseded EASA AD 2024-0027. Since EASA AD 2024-0027 was issued, Airbus published certain SRM tasks for repair as a result of the repetitive inspections at revision dated May 2024 to remove inadequate instructions for bush installation at steps 2 to 9 dated February 2024 or earlier. Accordingly, EASA AD 2024-0230 prohibits the use of SRM tasks 57-21-11-300-010, 57-21-11-300-021, and 57-21-11-300-025 that were deactivated at revision dated August 2023 for accomplishing repairs. In the SNPRM, the FAA revised the proposals in the NPRM by adding a prohibition against accomplishing a repair using certain SRM tasks. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-1702. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received a comment from United Airlines, who supported the SNPRM without change. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conclusion</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 reviewed the relevant data, considered any comments received, and determined that air safety requires adopting this AD as proposed. Accordingly, the FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. Except for minor editorial changes, this AD is adopted as proposed in the SNPRM. None of the changes will increase the economic burden on any operator. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2024-0230, which specifies procedures for repetitive detailed inspections for cracks of the affected areas (left-hand and right-hand wing manhole access panel attachment holes in the bottom wing skin panels 2, between rib 13 and rib 23) and applicable corrective actions ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> repair). EASA AD 2024-0230 also prohibits accomplishing a repair using certain SRM tasks. 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">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD affects 1,650 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,r50,12,r50,r50"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs for Required Actions</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Action</CHED> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> Cost on U.S. operators </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Inspection</ENT> <ENT>14 work-hours × $85 per hour = $1,190</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>$1,190 per inspection cycle</ENT> <ENT>$1,963,500 per inspection cycle.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The extent of damage found during the required inspection could vary significantly from airplane to airplane. The FAA has no way of determining how much damage may be found on each airplane, the cost to repair the damage on each airplane, or the number of airplanes that may require repair. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Authority for This Rulemaking</HD> Title 49 of the United States Code specifies the FAA's authority to issue rules on aviation safety. Subtitle I, section 106, describes the authority of the FAA Administrator. Subtitle VII: Aviation Programs, describes in more detail the scope of the Agency's authority. The FAA is issuing this rulemaking under the authority described in Subtitle VII, Part A, Subpart III, Section 44701: General requirements. Under that section, Congress charges the FAA with promoting safe flight of civil aircraft in air commerce by prescribing regulations for practices, methods, and procedures the Administrator finds necessary for safety in air commerce. This regulation is within the scope of that authority because it addresses an unsafe condition that is likely to exist or develop on products identified in this rulemaking action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Findings</HD> This AD will not have federalism implications under Executive Order 13132. This AD will not have a substantial direct effect on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━