Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2024-2662; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00448-T; Amendment 39-23132; AD 2025-18-05]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; The Boeing Company Airplanes</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 The Boeing Company Model 767-300 series airplanes modified by a certain supplemental type certificate (STC). This AD was prompted by a discovery that certain pitot-static tubing of the first officer's pitot-static system was installed incorrectly in the main and mid equipment center during the airplane conversion from passenger to freighter. This AD requires a visual inspection of certain pitot-static rigid tubes and flexible hoses to determine whether low points exist, and if necessary, related investigative and corrective actions. 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 23, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of October 23, 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-2024-2662; 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 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. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For Israel Aerospace Industries, Ltd. material identified in this AD, contact Israel Aerospace Industries, Ltd., Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israel 70100; telephone 972-39359826; email <E T="03">tmazor@iai.co.il</E> . • You may view this material at the FAA, Airworthiness Products Section, Operational Safety Branch, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call 206-231-3195. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2662. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Joe Salameh, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; telephone: 206-231-3536; email: <E T="03">Joe.Salameh@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 The Boeing Company Model 767-300 series airplanes modified by FAA STC ST02040SE. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on December 17, 2024 (89 FR 102019). The NPRM was prompted by a discovery that certain pitot-static tubing of the first officer's pitot-static system was installed incorrectly in the main and mid equipment center during the airplane conversion from passenger to freighter. The Civil Aviation Authority of Israel (CAAI), which is the aviation authority for Israel, issued AD ISR I-34-2024-07-1, dated August 6, 2024 (CAAI AD ISR I-34-2024-07-1) (also referred to as the MCAI) to address the unsafe condition for The Boeing Company Model 767-300 series airplanes, that have been modified to freighters in accordance with CAAI STC SA-218 (FAA STC ST02040SE, EASA STC 10028430, CAAC VSTC0812, TCCA SA14-67, ANAC 2011S03-12). Only FAA STC ST02040SE is approved for U.S. operators. The MCAI states that due to the pitot-static tubing improper rerouting on the airplane conversion from passenger to freighter, two erroneous conditions were found in the tubing connecting the pitot and the static system tubing to the right air data computer belonging to the first officer system: The flexible hoses part number (P/N) BACH30BC06-0097 and P/N BACH30BC05-0111, creating a potential water trap; and rigid tubes P/N 233T9110-437 and P/N 233T9110-320/314 installed through a structure 9G rigid barrier opening, creating a potential water trap. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require a visual inspection of certain pitot-static rigid tubes and flexible hoses to determine whether low points exist, and if necessary, related investigative and corrective actions. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the incorrect installation of the pitot static tubing of the first officer's pitot-static system. The unsafe conditions, if not addressed, may affect the capability to drain water or moisture collected in the first officer pitot-static tubing, and may cause malfunction to the system, leading to an increased flight crew workload and possible loss of control of the airplane. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2024-2662. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA), Boeing, and DHL Air Austria who supported the NPRM without change. The FAA received additional comments from Aviation Partners Boeing (APB) and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Effect of Winglets on Accomplishment of the Proposed Actions</HD> APB stated that the installation of winglets per STC ST01920SE does not affect compliance with the proposed actions. The FAA agrees with the commenter. The installation of STC ST01920SE does not affect the ability to accomplish the actions required by this AD. The FAA has not changed this AD in this regard. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Change Corrective Actions Compliance Time</HD> IAI requested the FAA delete the text “before further flight” in paragraph (g) of the proposed AD. IAI stated that the compliance requirement of the proposed AD is within 36 months from the effective date of the proposed AD. IAI requested to delete the text “before further flight” to allow corrective actions to be performed within the 36 months compliance time, and to allow separate schedules for inspections and corrective actions. The FAA agrees with this request for the reasons provided and has revised paragraph (g) of this AD accordingly. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Clarification of Unsafe Condition Statement</HD> The unsafe condition statement in the NPRM specified that the unsafe condition, if not addressed, may affect the capability to drain water or moisture collected in the first officer pitot-static tubing, and may cause malfunction to the system; however, it did not specify an end-level effect if the system malfunctioned. The malfunction to the system could lead to an increased flight crew workload and possible loss of control of the airplane. The FAA has revised the unsafe condition statement in this final rule accordingly. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conclusion</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 reviewed the relevant data, considered any comments received, and determined that air safety requires adopting this AD as proposed. Accordingly, the FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. Except for minor editorial changes, and any other changes described previously, this AD is adopted as proposed in the NPRM. None of the changes will increase the economic burden on any operator. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., Service Bulletin 368-34-106, dated August 2024. This material specifies procedures for a visual inspection of the pitot static rigid tubes, P/N 233T9110-437 and P/N 233T9110-314, and the flexible hoses, P/N BACH30BC06-0097 and P/N BACH30BC05-0111, to determine whether low points exist, and related investigative and corrective actions. The related investigative action is a visual inspection for the installation of the provisions located above the right miscellaneous electrical equipment panel (P37). The corrective actions include replacement of the pitot and the static system tubing connected to the right air data computer, including installation of standoffs, rigid tubes, union fitting, elbow fitting, and flexible hoses, and performing functional tests. 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">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD affects 88 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,10,xs68,xs90"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs for Required Actions</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost per product</CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost on U.S. operators</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Up to 2 work-hours × $85 per hour = Up to $170</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>Up to $170</ENT> <ENT>Up to $14,960.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA estimates the following costs to do any necessary on-condition action ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━