Airworthiness Directives; Diamond Aircraft Industries GmbH Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-2263; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00729-A]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Diamond Aircraft Industries GmbH 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 all Diamond Aircraft Industries GmbH (DAI) Model DA 42, DA 42 NG, and DA 42 M-NG airplanes. This proposed AD was prompted by several reports of passenger door separation from the fuselage. This proposed AD would require revising the existing airplane flight manual (AFM) for your airplane to provide the flight crew with revised operating limitations, emergency procedures, and normal operating procedures; modifying the airplane; and repetitively inspecting the door latching and safety hooks for correct engagement, foreign objects, damage (including but not limited to corrosion and wear that exceeds specified limits), and proper function. 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 October 9, 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-2025-2263; 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 Diamond Aircraft material identified in this proposed AD, contact DAI, N.A. Otto-Straβe 5, A-2700 Wiener Neustadt, Austria; phone: +43 2622 26700; email: <E T="03">office@diamond-air.at</E> ; website: <E T="03">diamondaircraft.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> Evan Weaver, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (316) 944-8910; email: <E T="03">evan.p.weaver@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 <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-2263; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00729-A” 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 Evan Weaver, 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 2024-0235, dated December 6, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0235) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on all DAI Model DA 42, DA 42 NG, DA 42 M, and DA 42 M-NG airplanes. The MCAI states that DAI received several reports of passenger door separation. DAI attributed the root cause of certain instances to the passenger doors not being properly latched, but DAI was unable to find a definitive root cause of the remaining occurrences. Passenger door separation could damage the airplane, possibly lead to loss of control of the airplane, and injure people on the ground. To address the unsafe condition, DAI issued an AFM temporary revision amending procedures and limitations and issued material with instructions to install placards in the cabin to prevent misuse of the passenger door, to inspect the passenger door latching and safety hook mechanisms, and to collect and report findings after each repetitive inspection to them. The MCAI requires updating the AFM, modifying the airplane, repetitively inspecting the door latching and safety hook mechanisms, and reporting all findings to DAI. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-2263. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Diamond Aircraft Mandatory Service Bulletin MSB 42-149 and MSB 42NG-095, dated December 2, 2024 (issued as one document), published with Diamond Aircraft Work Instruction WI-MSB 42-149 and WI-MSB 42NG-095, Revision 2, dated January 17, 2025 (issued as one document), attached. This material specifies procedures for installing passenger door placards and inspecting the passenger door system for Model DA 42, DA 42 M, DA 42 NG, and DA 42 M-NG airplanes. The FAA also reviewed Diamond Aircraft DA 42 AFM Doc. No. 7.01.05-E Temporary Revision TR-MAM-42-1333, Door Latching and Locking, dated November 28, 2024. This material specifies procedures for revising the operating limitations, emergency procedures, and normal operating procedures related to door latching and locking for Model DA 42 airplanes with Continental Aerospace Technologies engines installed. In addition, the FAA reviewed Diamond Aircraft DA 42 with OAM 42-102 Garmin GFC 700 AFM Doc. No. 7.01.06-E Temporary Revision TR-MAM-42-1333, Door Latching and Locking, dated November 28, 2024. This material specifies procedures for amending the AFM for Model DA 42 airplanes with Continental Aerospace Technologies engines and Garmin GFC 700 Automatic Flight Control System installed. The FAA also reviewed Diamond Aircraft DA 42 NG AFM Doc. No. 7.01.15-E Temporary Revision TR-MAM-42-1333, Door Latching and Locking, dated November 28, 2024. This material specifies procedures for revising the operating limitations, emergency procedures, and normal operating procedures of the AFM for Model DA 42 NG and DA 42 NG-M airplanes. The FAA also reviewed Diamond Aircraft DA 42 NG AFM Doc. No. 7.01.16-E Temporary Revision TR-MAM-42-1333, Door Latching and Locking, dated November 28, 2024. This material specifies procedures for amending the AFM for Model DA 42 NG and DA 42 NG-M airplanes with MAM 42-600 Performance Enhancement. 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 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, it 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, except as discussed under “Differences Between this Proposed AD and the MCAI.” The owner/operator (pilot) holding at least a private pilot certificate may revise the existing AFM for your airplane and must enter compliance with the applicable paragraph of this proposed AD into the airplane maintenance records in ac ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━