Airworthiness Directives; Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecnam S.p.A. Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-2266; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00406-A; Amendment 39-23123; AD 2025-17-13]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecnam S.p.A. Airplanes</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 certain Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecnam S.p.A. (Tecnam) Model P-Mentor airplanes. This AD was prompted by the failure of the pilot seat locking mechanism. This AD requires an initial and repetitive inspections of the seat rails of pilot and co-pilot seats and completing corrective action as needed. This AD includes an optional terminating action for the inspection requirement. 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. 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-2025-2266; 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 Tecnam material identified in this AD, contact Tecnam, Via Maiorise, 81043 Capua CE, Italy; phone: +39 0823 622297; email: <E T="03">technical.support@tecnam.com</E> ; website: <E T="03">tecnam.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. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-2266. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ramon Walker Perez, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (847) 294-7337; email: <E T="03">ramon.a.walker.perez@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-2025-2266; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00406-A” 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 Ramon Walker Perez, 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 2024-0138, dated July 11, 2024 (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on certain Tecnam Model P-Mentor airplanes. The MCAI states there was a report of failure of the pilot seat locking mechanism that could lead to the pilot seat unlocking during flight, possibly resulting in loss of control of the airplane. A subsequent inspection revealed interference between the leather covering of the pilot seat and the seat locking lever. The MCAI requires initial and repetitive inspections of the affected parts and if any discrepancy as defined in the service material is detected contacting Tecnam for repair instructions and accomplishing those instructions accordingly. The MCAI also provides an optional terminating action for the repetitive inspections. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-2266. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed TECNAM Service Bulletin SB 738-CS-Ed. 1, Rev. 2, dated July 5, 2024 (TECNAM SB 738-CS-Ed. 1, Rev. 2). This material specifies procedures for inspecting the P-Mentor seat rails. The FAA also reviewed TECNAM Service Bulletin SB 748-CS-Ed 1, Rev. 0, dated April 22, 2024 (TECNAM SB 748-CS-Ed. 1, Rev. 0). This material specifies the P-Mentor new seat design. 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 and material 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 the material already described, except as discussed under “Differences Between this AD and the Referenced Material.” <HD SOURCE="HD1">Differences Between This AD and the MCAI or Referenced Material</HD> The MCAI specifies to contact the manufacturer for approved repair instructions if it is determined during an inspection that there is any discrepancy detected as described in the referenced service material. This AD requires doing repairs in accordance with a method approved by the FAA; EASA; or Tecnam's EASA Design Organization Approval (DOA). If approved by the DOA, the approval must include the DOA-authorized signature. The MCAI also specifies that the repetitive inspections of the affected parts (pilot and co-pilot seats) may be accomplished by the pilot-owner, but this AD does not allow the pilot-owner to do those actions. TECNAM SB 738-CS-Ed. 1, Rev. 2, specifies to report certain information to the manufacturer. This AD does not require this reporting. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Justification for Immediate Adoption and Determination of the Effective Date</HD> Section 553(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) (5 U.S.C. 551 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) authorizes agencies to dispense with notice and comment procedures for rules when the agency, for “good cause,” finds that those procedures are “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Under this section, an agency, upon finding good cause, may issue a final rule without providing notice and seeking comment prior to issuance. Further, section 553(d) of the APA authorizes agencies to make rules effective in less than thirty days, upon a finding of good cause. The FAA justifies waiving notice and comment prior to adoption of this rule because there are currently no domestic operators of this product. It is unlikely that the FAA will receive any adverse comments or useful information about this AD from any U.S. operator. Accordingly, notice and opportunity for prior public comment are unnecessary, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(b). In addition, for the foregoing reason(s), the FAA finds that good cause exists pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(d) for making this amendment effect ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━