Airworthiness Directives; International Aero Engines AG Engines

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-2423; Project Identifier AD-2024-00320-E; Amendment 39-23126; AD 2025-17-16]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; International Aero Engines AG Engines</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 certain International Aero Engines AG (IAE AG) Model V2522-A5, V2524-A5, V2525-D5, V2527-A5, V2527E-A5, V2527M-A5, V2528-D5, V2530-A5, V2531-E5, and V2533-A5 engines. This AD was prompted by further analysis of an event involving an IAE AG Model V2533-A5 engine that had an uncontained failure of a high-pressure turbine (HPT) 1st-stage hub that resulted in high-energy debris penetrating the engine cowling. This AD requires revising the airworthiness limitations section (ALS) of the existing maintenance manual or instructions for continued airworthiness and the existing approved maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to include new inspections of certain critical rotating parts. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This AD is effective October 10, 2025. </DATES> <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-2024-2423; 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, 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Carol Nguyen, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th Street, Des Moines, WA 98198 phone: (781) 238-7655; email: <E T="03">carol.nguyen@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 certain IAE AG Model V2522-A5, V2524-A5, V2525-D5, V2527-A5, V2527E-A5, V2527M-A5, V2528-D5, V2530-A5, V2531-E5, and V2533-A5 engines. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on November 12, 2024 (89 FR 88908). The NPRM was prompted by further analysis of an event involving an IAE AG Model V2533-A5 engine that had an uncontained failure of an HPT 1st-stage hub that resulted in high-energy debris penetrating the engine cowling. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require revising the ALS of the existing maintenance manual or instructions for continued airworthiness and the existing approved maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to include new inspections of the HPT 1st-stage hub and HPT 2nd-stage hub. 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 seven commenters. The commenters were the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA); JetBlue Airways (JetBlue); Lufthansa Technik AG (Lufthansa); Ryanair; SIA Engineering Company (SIAEC); United Airlines (UAL); and an anonymous commenter. ALPA supported the proposed AD without change. The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Update Task Reference</HD> JetBlue, Lufthansa, Ryanair, SIAEC, UAL, and an anonymous commenter requested that the FAA change one of the tasks in the “Inspection (Engine Manual Reference)” column in table 1 to paragraph (g) of the proposed AD from “Task 72-45-11-200-009” to “Task 72-45-31-200-009.” UAL, JetBlue, and Ryanair noted that Task 72-45-11-200-009 does not exist in the engine manual. The FAA agrees and has updated the language in table 1 to paragraph (g) of this AD as requested. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Update Paragraph (g) of the Proposed AD</HD> An anonymous commenter requested that the FAA update paragraph (g) of the proposed AD to read as follows; “Revise the Maintenance Scheduling Section (MSS) of the Time Limits Manuals (TLM): T-V2500-1IA Task 05-10-00-990-000-B00 (A5), T-V2500-3IA Task 05-10-00-990-000 (D5), and T-V2500-[???] Task 05-10-00-990-000(?) (E5), and for air carrier operations revise the approved continuous airworthiness maintenance program; by incorporating the information specified in table 1 to paragraph (g) of this AD, as applicable.” The anonymous commenter noted that the use of the word “your” to describe the existing approved maintenance or inspection program is not clear and the statement should be changed to clarify that the action relates to each FAA certificated air carrier. The FAA partially agrees. The FAA does not agree with the wording proposed by the anonymous commenter because not all operators use the term “continuous airworthiness maintenance program.” The FAA agrees to meet the commenter's intent in paragraph (g)(1) and (2) of this AD by updating those paragraphs as set forth in the AD section of this rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Clarify Responsibility for Required Actions</HD> Lufthansa requested that the FAA reword paragraph (g) of the proposed AD to ensure that parts are inspected during each qualifying shop visit directly after the effective date of the proposed AD and to clarify which requirements are to be done by the repair shops and which must be done on-wing by the air carriers. The FAA agrees and has updated the language in paragraph (g) of this AD to specify required actions for air carrier operations and to clarify that TASK 72-45-11-200-006 and TASK 72-45-31-200-009 are located in paragraph B.1 of the Maintenance Scheduling section of the applicable TLM, which is done at piece-part exposure. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Clarify Inspection Task Requirement</HD> An anonymous commenter requested that the FAA clarify that the performance of each inspection task is not directly required by the proposed AD, and that the only required actions are the one time update to the (FAA Approved) Maintenance Scheduling sections for the V2500-A5, V2500-D5, and V2500-D5 TLM, and the one time update to each FAA Certificated Air Carrier's Continuous Airworthiness Maintenance Program. The FAA agrees to clarify. This AD requires an update to the operator's ICA, which includes the Engine Maintenance Manual (EMM). The operator's EMM will need to be updated to include TASK 72-45-11-200-006 and TASK 72-45-31-200-009 in the TLM in order to comply with this AD. For some operators, this would be considered their Continuous Airworthiness Maintenance Program. The performance of these tasks is required by other FAA regulations that are then required upon compliance with this AD. The FAA did not change this AD as a result of this comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Clarify Responsibility for EMM Revision</HD> SIAEC requested that the FAA update paragraph (g) of this AD to clarify who is responsible for revising the EMM. SIAEC notes that the proposed AD requires a revision to the Maintenance Scheduling paragraph of the ALS of the existing approved EMM, but an operator is unable to revise the EMM because it is the responsibility of the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). The FAA disagrees that the revision to the EMM is solely the responsibility of the OEM because an operator may not be required to have the latest version of the OEM's EMM incorporated into their ICA. This AD requires the operator to include the latest two inspection tasks into the operator's EMM regardless of what version of the EMM they are currently required to have. The operator will then update their existing approved maintenance or inspection program, as applicable. The FAA did not change this AD as a result of this comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Refer to the ALS of the Approved TLM</HD> Lufthansa requested that the FAA refer to the ALS of the approved TLM in the proposed AD instead of the ALS of the approved EMM. The FAA agrees and has updated the language in paragraph (g)(1) of this AD as requested. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Clarify Compliance With AD Requirements</HD> SIAEC requested that the FAA clarify whether the incorporation of TASK 72-45-11-200-006 and TASK 72-45-31-200-009 into the EMM constitutes compliance with the requirement of the proposed AD and no further action is required. The FAA agrees to clarify. The incorporation of TASK 72-45-11-200-006 and TASK 72-45-31-200-009 into the EMM only constitutes compliance with the requirements of this AD for those that do not by regulation have an existing approved maintenance or inspection program. For operators that do have such program, there is an additional requirement for operators to make changes to their existing approved maintenance or inspection program. The FAA did not change this AD as a result of this comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Change the Proposed AD to a Supersedure</HD> An anonymous commenter requested that the FAA designate the proposed AD as a supersedure to AD 2004-12-08, Amendment 39-13667 (69 FR 34051, June 18, 2004) (AD 2004-12-08). The commenter noted that all required actions of AD 2004-12-08 must have been completed within 90 days of July 23, 2004. The FAA disagrees with the request to issue this final rule as a supersedure AD. The ALS revisions required by AD 2004-12-08 include enhanced inspections of certain life-limited parts at each piece-part exposure while this AD requires the inclusion of two additional ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━