Airworthiness Directives; Safran Helicopter Engines, S.A. (Type Certificate Previously Held by Turbomeca, S.A.) Engines

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-2557; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00533-E]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Safran Helicopter Engines, S.A. (Type Certificate Previously Held by Turbomeca, S.A.) Engines</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 adopt a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all Safran Helicopter Engines, S.A. (Safran) Model Arriel 2E engines. This proposed AD was prompted by the determination that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations are necessary. This proposed AD would require revising existing maintenance or inspection program, to incorporate the airworthiness limitations section (ALS) of the existing approved aircraft maintenance program (AMP), as applicable. 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 November 10, 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-2025-2557; 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 European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) material identified in this NPRM, 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, Airworthiness Products Section, Operational Safety Branch, 1200 District Avenue, Burlington, MA 01803. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> David Bergeron, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (860) 386-1805; email: <E T="03">david.j.bergeron@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 using a method listed under the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-2557; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00533-E” 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 this 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 David Bergeron, 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> EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, has issued EASA AD 2025-0079, dated April 10, 2025 (EASA AD 2025-0079) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on Safran Model Arriel 2D, 2E, 2H, 2L2, and 2N engines. The MCAI states that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations have been developed and the restrictive limitations include replacing life-limited parts before exceeding the applicable life limit, performing applicable maintenance tasks, and revising the approved aircraft maintenance program. This condition, if not addressed, could result in failure of one or more engines, loss of thrust control, and consequent reduced control of the helicopter. 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-2025-2557. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2025-0079, which specifies procedures for replacing components before exceeding their life limits and accomplishing all applicable maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals specified in the ALS as defined in EASA AD 2025-0079. Depending on the results of the maintenance tasks, EASA AD 2025-0079 requires accomplishing corrective action(s) or contacting Safran Helicopters for approved instructions and accomplishing those instructions. Additionally, EASA AD 2025-0079 specifies procedures for accomplishing the actions specified in the applicable ALS, including performing maintenance tasks, replacing life-limited parts, and specifies procedures for revising the AMP by incorporating the limitations, tasks, and associated thresholds and intervals described in the specified ALS, as applicable. Revising the AMP constitutes terminating action for the requirement to record accomplishment of the actions of replacing components before exceeding their life limits and accomplishing maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals specified in the applicable ALS as required by EASA AD 2025-0079 for demonstration of AD compliance on a continued basis. 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 NPRM 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">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2025-0079, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. See “Differences Between this Proposed AD and the MCAI” for a discussion of the general differences identified in this AD. An owner/operator (pilot) holding at least at least a private pilot certificate may incorporate the actions and associated thresholds and intervals, including life limits and maintenance tasks, into existing approved maintenance or inspection program as applicable, and must enter into compliance with the applicable paragraph(s) of the proposed AD into the helicopter maintenance records in accordance with 14 CFR 43.9(a) and 91.417(a)(2)(v). The pilot may perform these actions because they only involve revising the AMP. This is an exception to the FAA's standard maintenance regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Differences Between This Proposed AD and the MCAI</HD> EASA AD 2025-0079 applies to Safran Model Arriel 2D, 2E, 2H, 2L2, and 2N engines, whereas this proposed AD would only apply to Safran Model Arriel 2E engines. The ALS revisions required by this proposed AD do not include Safran Model Arriel 2D engines, and Safran Model Arriel 2H, 2L2, and 2N engines do not have an FAA type certificate. <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 complian ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━