Airworthiness Directives; DAHER AEROSPACE (Type Certificate Previously Held by SOCATA) Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-2265; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00714-A]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; DAHER AEROSPACE (Type Certificate Previously Held by SOCATA) 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) 2007-06-11, which applies to certain SOCATA (type certificate now held by DAHER AEROSPACE) Model TBM 700 airplanes. AD 2007-06-11 requires repetitively inspecting the vertical stabilizer attachment fittings and bolts for cracks or corrosion, and, if necessary, repairing or replacing the damaged part and then applying a corrosion protection reinforcement. Since the FAA issued AD 2007-06-11, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, superseded the previous Direction generale de l'aviation civile (DGAC) France AD to introduce new service information providing instructions for installing new vertical stabilizer attachment fittings having improved corrosion resistant material as an optional terminating action for the repetitive inspections. This proposed AD would retain the requirements of AD 2007-06-11 and include a new optional terminating action for the repetitive inspections. 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-2025-2265; 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 DAHER AEROSPACE and EADS SOCATA material identified in this proposed AD, contact DAHER AEROSPACE, Customer Support, Airplane Division, 65921 Tarbes Cedex 9, France; phone: 33 (0)5 62.41.73.00; email: <E T="03">tbmcare@daher.com;</E> website: <E T="03">daher.com.</E> • You may view this service information 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> Hye Yoon Jang, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (206) 231-3758; email: <E T="03">hye.yoon.jang@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-2025-2265; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00714-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 the 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 Hye Yoon Jang, 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 FAA issued AD 2007-06-11, Amendment 39-14992 (72 FR 12546, March 16, 2007) (AD 2007-06-11), for certain serial-numbered SOCATA (type certificate now held by DAHER AEROSPACE) Model TBM 700 airplanes. AD 2007-06-11 was prompted by DGAC France AD F-2003-366 R1, dated November 24, 2004 (DGAC France AD F-2003-366 R1). DGAC was the aviation authority for France prior to EASA. AD 2007-06-11 requires repetitively inspecting the vertical stabilizer attachment fittings and bolts for cracks or corrosion, and, if necessary, repairing or replacing the damaged part and then applying a corrosion protection reinforcement. The FAA issued AD 2007-06-11 to address cracks in a vertical stabilizer attachment fitting, which, if not addressed, could result in reduced structural integrity of the vertical stabilizer. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2007-06-11 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2007-06-11, EASA superseded DGAC France AD F-2003-366 R1, and issued EASA AD 2019-0070, dated March 28, 2019 (also referred to as the MCAI). The MCAI states that cracks were found on a vertical stabilizer attachment fitting on a TBM 700 aeroplane in service. Investigation results showed that these cracks were due to corrosion. This unsafe condition could result in reduced structural integrity of the vertical stabilizer. To address this condition, EASA AD 2019-0070 retained all of the requirements of DGAC France AD F-2003-366 R1 and included an optional terminating action for the repetitive inspections of the vertical stabilizer attachment fittings and bolts. The optional terminating action requires installing new vertical stabilizer attachment fittings (referred to as serviceable parts in EASA AD 2019-0070) made from material that has improved corrosion resistance. The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-2265. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EADS SOCATA TBM Aircraft Mandatory Service Bulletin No. SB 70-104, Amendment 3, dated December 2007. This material species procedures for inspecting the vertical stabilizer attachment fittings for crack(s) and corrosion, repairing or replacing any damaged part, and applying corrosion protection reinforcement on the attachment fittings. The FAA also reviewed DAHER Aerospace TBM Aircraft Mandatory Service Bulletin No. SB 70-104, Revision 4, dated December 2018. This material specifies procedures for inspecting the vertical stabilizer attachment fittings for crack(s) and corrosion, repairing or replacing any damaged part, and applying corrosion protection on the attachment fittings. In addition, the FAA reviewed DAHER AEROSPACE TBM Aircraft Recommended Service Bulletin SB 70-255, dated December 2018. This material specifies procedures for modifying the vertical stabilizer and fuselage by installing new front and rear fittings. This proposed AD would also require EADS SOCATA TBM Aircraft Mandatory Service Bulletin No. SB 70-104, Amendment 1, dated August 2004, which the Director of the Federal Register approved for incorporation by reference as of April 20, 2007 (72 FR 12546, dated March 16, 2007). Furthermore, this proposed AD would also require EADS SOCATA TBM Aircraft Mandatory Service Bulletin No. SB 70-104, Amendment 2, dated January 2007, which the Director of the Federal Register approved for incorporation by reference as of April 20, 2007 (72 FR 12546, dated March 16, 2007). 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 determin ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━