Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-1719; Project Identifier AD-2024-00382-T]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes</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 The Boeing Company Model 767-200 and 767-300 series airplanes. This proposed AD was prompted by reports of scribe lines found at skin lap joints and butt joints, around external repairs and antennas, and at locations where external decals had been cut. For some airplanes, this proposed AD would require a detailed inspection for scribe lines and applicable related investigative and corrective actions. For other airplanes, this AD would require repetitive nondestructive testing inspections for cracking at certain stringers of the skin lap joint fuselage skin and applicable corrective actions. 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 September 8, 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-2025-1719; 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 Boeing material identified in this proposed AD, contact Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Attention: Contractual & Data Services (C&DS), 2600 Westminster Blvd., MC 110-SK57, Seal Beach, CA 90740-5600; telephone 562-797-1717; website <E T="03">myboeingfleet.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. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-1719. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Stefanie Roesli, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3964; email: <E T="03">stefanie.n.roesli@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 to an address listed under the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-1719; Project Identifier AD-2024-00382-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 Stefanie Roesli, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3964; email: <E T="03">stefanie.n.roesli@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> AD 2010-06-16, Amendment 39-16241 (75 FR 12670, March 17, 2010) (AD 2010-06-16), applies to certain Model 767-200, -300, -300F, and -400ER series airplanes. AD 2010-06-16 was prompted by a report indicating that scribe lines were found at skin lap joints and butt joints, around external repairs and antennas, and at locations where external decals had been cut. AD 2010-06-16 requires inspections for scribe lines in the fuselage skin at skin lap joints, the skin at certain external approved repairs, the skin around external features such as antennas, and the skin at decals, and applicable related investigative and corrective actions, as specified in Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 767-53A0193, Revision 1, dated April 9, 2009. The FAA issued AD 2010-06-16 to prevent fatigue cracks in the skin, which could result in sudden decompression of the airplane. Since AD 2010-06-16 was issued, the FAA has determined that these actions need to be done at reduced compliance times on airplanes modified using certain supplemental type certificate (STCs): Model 767-200 airplanes converted to a special freighter by STC ST01433SE; and Model 767-300 airplanes converted to a special freighter by STC ST02040SE. The FAA has determined that, for the STC-modified airplanes, loads on the skin throughout the airplane are changed following the STC conversion and therefore cracking could occur earlier than expected. As a result, all initial compliance times in Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 767-53A0193, Revision 3, dated June 27, 2024, must be reduced by a factor of 0.60 for Model 767-200 series airplanes and a factor of 0.46 for Model 767-300 series airplanes, and all repetitive intervals must be reduced by a factor of 0.10 for both Model 767-200 and 767-300 series airplanes. Because the actions in Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 767-53A0193, Revision 3, dated June 27, 2024, are substantively the same as the actions in Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 767 53A0193, Revision 1, dated April 9, 2009, for the STC-modified airplanes, accomplishing the initial actions required by this proposed AD would terminate the requirements of AD 2010-06-16. The FAA has also received a report indicating that freighter modifications done to airplanes identified as Group 13 and Group 14 in Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 767-53A0193, Revision 3, dated June 27, 2024, have multiple modified lap splice locations, as well as additional external doublers, skin replacements, and door cutouts. The modified parts could hide pre-existing scribe lines that if undetected, could turn into undetected cracks in the fuselage skin. These groups were added to Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 767-53A0193, Revision 3, dated June 27, 2024, since these modifications prevent accomplishment of the actions required by AD 2010-06-16 on these airplanes. The FAA has determined that in addition to the actions in AD 2010-06-16, repetitive nondestructive inspections are necessary to address the unsafe condition on Group 13 and 14 airplanes. <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 Boeing Alert Service Bulletin 767-53A0193, Revision 3, dated June 27, 2024. This material specifies the following inspections and applicable related investigative and corrective actions: • Repetitive detailed inspections to detect scribe lines along applicable skin lap joints, skin butt joints, external approved repairs, external features, decals, and fairings. • Removal of paint and sealant from affected areas before the initial detailed inspection. • Related investigative actions, including low- or high-frequency eddy current or ultrasonic inspections of the scribe lines to detect cracks. • Corrective actions of either repairing scribe lines and cracks or contacting Boeing for repair instructions and doing the repair. • Repair of scribe lines before further flight, except when a limited return to service (LRTS) program for qualifying scribe lines would allow return to service for a limited period before scribe lines are repaired. The LRTS program includes repetitive inspections to detect cracks where scribe lines are found. To qualify for an LRTS program, scribe lines must meet certain criteria based on their depth and location. • Contact ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━