Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0615; Project Identifier MCAI-2023-00990-R; Amendment 39-23112; AD 2025-17-02]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters</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 adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all Airbus Helicopters Model EC120B, EC 130 B4, and EC 130 T2 helicopters. This AD was prompted by a report of a missing retaining ring between the supply hose and the central supply coupling of an emergency flotation system (EFS) inflation assembly. This AD requires inspecting for the presence of the retaining ring in an EFS with certain inflation assemblies installed and, depending on the results, taking corrective action. This AD also prohibits installing an EFS with those inflation assemblies installed. 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 September 26, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in this AD as of September 26, 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-2025-0615; 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. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) material identified in this AD, contact EASA, Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer 3, 50668 Cologne, Germany; phone: +49 221 8999 000; email: <E T="03">ADs@easa.europa.eu;</E> website: <E T="03">easa.europa.eu.</E> You may find the EASA material on the EASA website at <E T="03">ad.easa.europa.eu.</E> • For Safran Aerosystems material identified in this AD, contact Safran Aerosystems, Floats & Rafts, 58 rue de Segonzac—B.P. 81, 16103 Cognac Cedex, France; phone: +33 5 45 83 20 20; email: <E T="03">technical.retrofit.sao@safrangroup.com;</E> website: <E T="03">www.safran-aerosystems.com/customers.</E> • You may view this material at the FAA, Office of the Regional Counsel, Southwest Region, 10101 Hillwood Parkway, Room 6N-321, Fort Worth, TX 76177. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. The EASA material is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0615. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Alexis Whitaker, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (516) 228-7309; email: <E T="03">alexis.j.whitaker@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 by adding an AD that would apply to all Airbus Helicopters Model EC120B, EC 130 B4, and EC 130 T2 helicopters. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on April 15, 2025 (90 FR 15659). The NPRM was prompted by EASA AD 2023-0166, dated August 25, 2023 (EASA AD 2023-0166) (also referred to as the MCAI), issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. The MCAI advises of a report that, during a maintenance check of a helicopter, it was discovered that a retaining ring was missing from the connection between the supply hose and the central supply coupling of an EFS inflation assembly. The MCAI states that the unsafe condition, if not detected and corrected, could lead to inflation of the EFS on only one side of the helicopter after ditching, which could result in immediate capsizing of the helicopter, possibly preventing the evacuation of occupants. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require inspecting for the presence of the retaining ring in an EFS with certain inflation assemblies installed and, depending on the results, taking corrective action. The NPRM also proposed to prohibit installing an EFS with those inflation assemblies installed. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from three commenters. Commenters included two individuals and Air Evac Lifeteam. The two individuals supported the NPRM without change. The following presents the comment received from Air Evac Lifeteam on the NPRM and the FAA's response to this comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Revise Compliance Statement and Requirement</HD> Air Evac Lifeteam stated that there is not a specified compliance path for any aircraft that does not have an EFS inflation system installed. The commenter suggested adding a compliance statement (requirement) to verify that an affected part is installed. The commenter added that if the affected part is not installed, then no further action would be required. The FAA disagrees with the commenter's request to revise the compliance requirements. As stated in the MCAI, which is incorporated by reference in this AD, “Group 2 helicopters are those that do not have an affected part installed.” Operators are responsible for reviewing their aircraft records to determine whether their helicopters are classified under Group 2. If so, no further action is required beyond maintaining standard documentation in accordance with their approved procedures and ensuring that an EFS with those inflation assemblies installed is not installed on a Group 2 helicopter. Therefore, an additional compliance statement is unnecessary, as the existing language in the MCAI already defines the applicability of the AD based on the presence or absence of the affected part. The FAA has not changed this AD in this regard. <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 NPRM. None of the changes will increase the economic burden on any operator. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Additional Changes Made to this Final Rule</HD> In the NPRM, the FAA designated paragraph (g) as “Clarification of Required Material.” This final rule redesignates paragraph (g) of this AD as “Required Actions” and moves the clarification of required material to paragraph (h)(2) of this AD. The FAA redesignated paragraph (g) to (h)(2) to further clarify that operators must use Safran Aerosystems Service Bulletin 025-69-42, Revision 00, dated June 13, 2023, where EASA AD 2023-0166 refers to “the Vendor SB.” <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2023-0166, which specifies procedures for inspecting the connection between the supply hose and the central supply coupling for the presence of the retaining ring in the EFS with certain inflation assemblies installed and, depending on the results, corrective action, which includes either sending the EFS to Safran Aerosystems or a Safran-approved repair center or installing a retaining ring. EASA AD 2023-0166 also prohibits installing an EFS with those inflation assemblies installed on any helicopter. The FAA also reviewed Safran Aerosystems Service Bulletin 025-69-42, Revision 00, dated June 13, 2023, which specifies procedures for inspecting the connection between the supply hose and the central supply coupling for the presence of the retaining ring in the EFS with certain inflation assemblies installed. If the retaining ring is present, this material specifies procedures for wrapping the supply hose connection with new adhesive tape. If the retaining ring is not present, this material specifies procedures for installing a retaining ring. 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">Differences Between This AD and the MCAI</HD> The MCAI applies to Airbus Helicopters Model EC 175 B helicopters, whereas this AD does not because that model does not have an FAA type certificate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD affects 359 helicopters of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD. <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,r50,10,10,12"> <TTITLE>Estimated Cost</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 EFS inflation assembly</ENT> <ENT>4.5 work-hours × $85 per hour = $383</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>$383</ENT> <ENT>$137,318</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA estimates the following costs to do any necessary replacements that would ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━