Airworthiness Directives; Goodrich Cabin Attendant Seats

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-1360; Project Identifier AD-2024-00710-Q,T]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Goodrich Cabin Attendant Seats</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 adopt a new airworthiness directive (AD) for Goodrich cabin attendant seats installed on Airbus SAS Model A330-200 series, A330-200 Freighter series, A330-300 series, A330-841, A330-941, A340-200 series, A340-300 series, A340-541, and A340-642 airplanes. This proposed AD was prompted by a report that track attachments used on certain part-numbered seats are non-compliant. This proposed AD would require replacing all seat track attachments and hardware and re-identifying the seat with a new part number. 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 August 25, 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-2025-1360; 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, any comments received, and other information. The street address for Docket Operations is listed above. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For Goodrich material identified in this proposed AD, contact Goodrich Aircraft Interior Products, 1275 North Newport Road, Colorado Springs, CO 80916-2779; phone: 719-380-0391; email: <E T="03">INTTechPub@collins.com</E> ; website: <E T="03">collinsaerospace.com</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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Thanh-Phuong Ta, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 3960 Paramount Boulevard, Lakewood, CA 90712; phone: 303-342-1095; email: <E T="03">Thanh-Phuong.T.Ta@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-2025-1360; Project Identifier AD-2024-00710-Q,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 Thanh-Phuong Ta, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 3960 Paramount Boulevard, Lakewood, CA 90712; phone: 303-342-1095; email: <E T="03">Thanh-Phuong.T.Ta@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 has received a report from Goodrich Corporation Interiors that track attachments used on certain part-numbered cabin attendant seats are not compliant with the requirement for the seats to withstand a dynamic load of 16 times the force of gravity (16g) in an accident per Technical Standard Order TSO-C127(a) and 14 CFR 25.562(b). These seats are installed on Airbus SAS Model A330-201, -202, -203, -223, -243, -223F, -243F, -301, -302, -303, -321, -322, -323, -341, -342, -343, -841, and -941 airplanes, and Model A340-211, -212, -213, -311, -312, -313, -541, and -642 airplanes. Due to flawed analysis and incomplete testing that did not consider the dynamic strength and geometry of the cast track attachments, the cabin attendant seat may detach from the airplane. This condition, if not addressed, could result in injury to the occupant or a blocked exit during an emergency evacuation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">FAA's Determination</HD> The FAA is issuing this NPRM 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">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed the following material: • Goodrich Service Bulletin 2057-25-071, Revision A, dated November 27, 2017; • Goodrich Service Bulletin 2071-25-046, Revision C, dated January 14, 2020; • Goodrich Service Bulletin 2157-25-092, Revision C, dated May 18, 2022; and • Goodrich Service Bulletin 2201-25-013, Revision E, dated May 20, 2024. This material specifies procedures for replacing all seat track attachments and hardware and then re-identifying the seat with a new part number. These documents are distinct since they apply to different airplane configurations. 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">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in the material already described, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. See “Differences Between this Proposed AD and the Referenced Material” for a discussion of these differences. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Difference Between This Proposed AD and the Referenced Material</HD> Although Goodrich Service Bulletins 2057-25-071, 2071-25-046, 2157-25-092, and 2201-25-013 recommend replacing the seat track attachments within 4 years, this proposed AD would require replacing them within 2 years. The FAA has determined that replacement within 4 years would not ensure an adequate level of safety for the affected fleet. In developing an appropriate compliance time for this AD, the FAA considered the manufacturer's recommendation, the degree of urgency associated with the subject unsafe condition, the average utilization of the affected fleet, and the time necessary to replace the seat track attachments. In light of these factors, the FAA finds a 2-year compliance time appropriate for affected airplanes to continue to operate without compromising safety. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD, if adopted as proposed, would affect 59 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this proposed AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="05" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,r50,12,12,12"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs</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">Replacement and seat reidentification</ENT> <ENT>15 work-hours × $85 per hour = $1,275</ENT> <ENT>$1,500</ENT> <ENT>$2,775</ENT> <ENT>$163,725</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA has included all known costs in its cost estimate. According to the manufacturer, however, some or all of the costs of this proposed AD may be covered under warranty, thereby reducing the cost impact on affected operators. <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, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━