Airworthiness Directives; Leonardo S.p.A. Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-2271; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-01166-R; Amendment 39-23128; AD 2025-18-01]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Leonardo S.p.A. Helicopters</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all Leonardo S.p.A. Model A109E, A109S, AW109SP, A119, and AW119 MKII helicopters. This AD was prompted by a report that certain manufacturer maintenance instructions for swashplate assembly installation specified incorrect torque values for certain swashplate nuts. This AD requires repetitively inspecting certain swashplate nuts for cracks, fretting, or slippage marks and, depending on the results, performing corrective actions. 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 25, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of September 25, 2025. The FAA must receive comments on this AD by October 27, 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-2025-2271; 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 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 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 this material on the EASA website at <E T="03">ad.easa.europa.eu.</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. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-2271. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Carl Franklin, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (817) 222-5291; email: <E T="03">carl.j.franklin@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 data, views, or arguments about this final rule. Send your comments using a method listed under the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-2271; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-01166-R” at the beginning of your comments. The most helpful comments reference a specific portion of the final rule, 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 final rule 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 final rule. <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 AD 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 AD, 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 AD. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Carl Franklin, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (817) 222-5291. 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> EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, has issued EASA AD 2025-0131, dated June 16, 2025 (EASA AD 2025-0131) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on Leonardo S.p.A. Model A109E, A109LUH, A109S, AW109SP, A119, and AW119MKII helicopters. The MCAI states that the manufacturer's maintenance instructions for the swashplate assembly installation included improper torque values for affected swashplate nuts having part number NAS1805-4 that attach the swashplate support to the main transmission. The FAA is issuing this AD to detect and correct the condition of the swashplate nuts, which if not addressed, could result in failure of the main rotor function and consequent loss of control of the helicopter. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-2271. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2025-0131, which specifies procedures for repetitive visual inspections of the affected swashplate nuts for cracks, fretting, or slippage marks and, depending on the results, replacement of the affected nuts and reinstallation of the swashplate assembly. EASA AD 2025-0131 also prohibits reinstallation of the swashplate assembly on any helicopter using certain manufacturer maintenance instructions. EASA AD 2025-0131 also specifies that replacement of the affected swashplate nuts and reinstallation of the swashplate assembly constitutes terminating action for the repetitive inspections. 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 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 is issuing this AD 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">AD Requirements</HD> This AD requires accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2025-0131, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD. See “Differences Between this AD and the MCAI” for a discussion of the general differences included in this AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Differences Between This AD and the Referenced Material</HD> The MCAI applies to Leonardo Model A109LUH helicopters, whereas this AD does not because that model does not have an FAA type certificate. The MCAI specifies reinstallation of the swashplate assembly within 200 flight hours after a replacement required by any inspection or within 2,400 flight hours after the effective date if replacement is not required. The MCAI states that reinstallation of the swashplate assembly is a terminating action for the inspection requirements of the MCAI. For this AD, the word “reinstallation” means “reconfiguration” as reinstallation of the swashplate is required before return to service. This AD also does not require the 2,400 flight hour swashplate assembly “reconfiguration” as this is considered a long-term action that would allow for prior opportunity for public comment. If replacement is not required, this AD will allow the swashplate assembly reconfiguration and corrective actions as optional terminating action for the inspection requirements of the AD. The FAA may consider future rulemaking with prior public comment on this action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Explanation of Required Compliance Information</HD> In the FAA's ongoing efforts to improve the efficiency of the AD process, the FAA developed a process to use some civil aviation authority (CAA) ADs as the primary source of information for compliance with requirements for corresponding FAA ADs. The FAA has been coordinating this process with manufacturers and CAAs. As a result, EASA AD 2025-0131 is incorporated by reference in this AD. This AD requires complian ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━