Airworthiness Directives; Schempp-Hirth Flugzeugbau GmbH Gliders

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-1362; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00062-G]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Schempp-Hirth Flugzeugbau GmbH Gliders</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 certain Schempp-Hirth Flugzeugbau GmbH (Schempp-Hirth) Model CIRRUS gliders. This proposed AD was prompted by reports of a broken outer race of the lower ball bearing installed in the all-moving horizontal tailplane drive fitting. This proposed AD would require inspecting the elevator drive fitting to determine the type of lower ball bearing installed, and depending upon the results, replacing the lower ball bearing with a serviceable part. 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 NPRM by September 5, 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-2025-1362; 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 SCHEMPP-HIRTH Flugzeugbau GmbH material identified in this proposed AD, contact Schempp-Hirth, Krebenstraße 25, 73230 Kirchheim unter Teck, Germany; phone: +49 7021 7298-0; email: <E T="03">info@schempp-hirth.com;</E> website: <E T="03">schempp-hirth.com</E> . • You may view this material at the FAA, Airworthiness Products Section, Operational Safety Branch, 901 Locust, Kansas City, MO 64106. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Peter Schmitt, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (206) 231-3377; email: <E T="03">peter.a.schmitt@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 <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-1362; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00062-G” 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 Peter Schmitt, 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> The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, has issued EASA AD 2024-0242R1, dated January 17, 2025 (EASA AD 2024-0242R1) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on Schempp-Hirth Model CIRRUS sailplanes (gliders). The MCAI states occurrences were reported of a broken outer race in the lower ball bearing installed on the all-moving horizontal tailplane drive fitting. This condition, if not addressed, could lead to the tailplane drive jamming and loss of control of the glider. The MCAI requires inspecting the elevator drive fitting to determine what type of lower ball bearing is installed, and depending upon the results, replacing the lower ball bearing with a serviceable part. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-1362. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed SCHEMPP-HIRTH Flugzeugbau GmbH Technical Note No. 278-25, Revision 1, dated July 9, 2024. This material specifies procedures for inspecting the elevator drive fitting to determine which type of lower ball bearing is installed, and depending on the results, replacing the lower ball bearing with a serviceable part. 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 and material referenced above. 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">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in the material already described. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD, if adopted as proposed, would affect 17 gliders of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this proposed AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,r50,10,10,12"> <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">Inspect elevator drive fitting or records review to determine if affected part is installed</ENT> <ENT>1 work-hour × $85 per hour = $85</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>$85</ENT> <ENT>$1,445</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA estimates the following costs to do any necessary replacements that would be required based on the results of the proposed inspection. The agency has no way of determining the number of gliders that might need these replacements: <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,r75,10,16"> <TTITLE>On-Condition Costs</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Action</CHED> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost per product</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Replace elevator drive lower ball bearing</ENT> <ENT>1 work-hour × $85 per hour = $85</ENT> <ENT>$35</ENT> <ENT>$120</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <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> The FAA determined that this proposed AD would not have federalism implications under Executive Order 13132. This proposed AD would not have a substantial direct effect on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━