Airworthiness Directives; Dassault Aviation Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-1729; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00568-T]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Dassault Aviation 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 supersede Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2022-12-10, which applies to certain Dassault Aviation Model FALCON 7X airplanes. AD 2022-12-10 requires revising the existing airplane flight manual (AFM) to provide emergency procedures for inconsistent or unreliable flight data, emergency and abnormal operations procedures for the generic input/output (GEN I/O) internal module failure, and emergency procedures for additional information. AD 2022-12-10 also requires revising the existing minimum equipment list (MEL) for the multi-function probe heating, air data, and inertial reference systems. Since the FAA issued AD 2022-12-10, the manufacturer developed modifications that fix a weak point in the avionics architecture. This proposed AD would continue to require the actions in AD 2022-12-10 and would remove certain airplanes from the applicability. This proposed AD would also require modification of the avionics system and related revisions to the existing AFM and MEL. 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 22, 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-2025-1729; 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 European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) material identified in this proposed 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> It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-1729. • 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> William Reisenauer, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: 516-228-7301; email: <E T="03">9-AVS-AIR-BACO-COS@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-2025-1729; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00568-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 William Reisenauer, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: 516-228-7301; email: <E T="03">9-AVS-AIR-BACO-COS@faa.gov.</E> 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 FAA issued AD 2022-12-10, Amendment 39-22082 (87 FR 45246, July 28, 2022) (AD 2022-12-10), for all Dassault Aviation Model FALCON 7X airplanes, except airplanes having Dassault modification M2091 embodied in production. AD 2022-12-10 was prompted by an MCAI originated by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. EASA issued AD 2021-0197, dated August 23, 2021 (EASA AD 2021-0197), to correct an unsafe condition on all Dassault Aviation Model FALCON 7X airplanes. EASA AD 2021-0197 states a weak point in the Falcon 7X “EASy” avionics architecture that, coupled with theoretical GEN I/O card failure, may lead to misleading data on display units. AD 2022-12-10 requires revising the existing AFM to provide emergency procedures for inconsistent or unreliable flight data and emergency and abnormal operations procedures for the GEN I/O internal module failure and revising the operator's existing FAA-approved MEL items for the multi-function probe heating, air data, and inertial reference systems. AD 2022-12-10 also requires revising the existing AFM to incorporate additional information in the emergency procedures. The FAA issued AD 2022-12-10 to address misleading data on display units. The unsafe condition, if not addressed, could reduce safety margins and lead to increased pilot workload and consequent reduced controllability of the airplane. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2022-12-10 Was Issued</HD> The preamble to AD 2022-12-10 specifies that the FAA considers that AD “interim action” and that the FAA might consider further rulemaking if a final action is identified. The manufacturer has since developed modifications ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> software upgrades) that fix a weak point in the avionics architecture to address the unsafe condition. The FAA has determined that the modifications and related AFM and MEL revisions should be required. Since the FAA issued AD 2022-12-10, EASA superseded EASA AD 2021-0197 with EASA AD 2022-0145, dated July 12, 2022 (EASA AD 2022-0145). EASA AD 2022-0145 was issued to retain the requirements of EASA AD 2021-0197, exclude airplanes on which Dassault modification M2091 was embodied in production, and require airplane serial numbers (S/Ns) 402 and subsequent with the “EASy III—2nd CERT” or “EASy III—3rd CERT” standard to upgrade the avionics architecture to the “EASY III—4th CERT” standard (modification M2091). EASA AD 2022-0145, in turn, was superseded by EASA AD 2023-0003, dated January 6, 2023 (EASA AD 2023-0003). EASA AD 2023-0003 was issued to retain the requirements of EASA AD 2022-0145, exclude airplanes on which Dassault modification M2096 or M2097 was embodied in production, and require airplane S/Ns 2 through 400 inclusive to upgrade the avionics architecture to the “EASy II—5th CERT” standard (modification M2096 or M2097, as applicable). EASA subsequently revised AD 2023-0003 with EASA AD 2023-0003R1, dated September 26, 2024 (EASA AD 2023-0003R1) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition for all Dassault Aviation Model FALCON 7X airplanes, except airplanes on which Dassault modification M2055, M2059, M2091, M2096, or M2097 was embodied in production. Since EASA AD 2023-0003 was issued, Dassault developed modifications M2055 (for airplane S/Ns 2 through 400 inclusive) and M2059 (for airplane S/Ns 402 and subsequent) that upgrade the avionics architecture to the “EASy IV” standard and issued Dassault Service Bulletin 7X-600, dated November 7, 2022; Dassault Service Bulletin 7X-601, April 24, 2023; and Dassault Service Bulletin 7X-602, June 3, 2023; as applicable, to provide in-service modification instructions. Accordingly, EASA AD 2023-0003R1 excludes airplanes on which modifications M2055 or M2059 was embodied in production and allows incorporation of those modifications in service as an optional method of compliance for modifications M2091, M2096, or M2097, as applicable. The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these produ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━