Airworthiness Directives; Bombardier, Inc., Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0616; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00304-T; Amendment 39-23122; AD 2025-17-12]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Bombardier, Inc., 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 all Bombardier, Inc., Model CL-600-1A11 (600) and CL-600-2A12 (601) airplanes, and certain Model CL-600-2B16 (601-3A, 601-3R, and 604 Variants) airplanes. This AD was prompted by a determination that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations are necessary. This AD requires revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. 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 October 31, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in this AD as of October 31, 2025. </EFFDATE> <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-2025-0616; 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 Bombardier material identified in this AD, contact Bombardier Business Aircraft Customer Response Center, 400 Côte-Vertu Road West, Dorval, Québec H4S 1Y9, Canada; telephone 514-855-2999; email <E T="03">ac.yul@aero.bombardier.com;</E> website <E T="03">https://my.bombardier.com/</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-2025-0616. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Brenda L. Buitrago, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: 516-228-7300; email: <E T="03">9-avs-nyaco-cos@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 all Bombardier, Inc., Model CL-600-1A11 (600) and CL-600-2A12 (601) airplanes, and certain Model CL-600-2B16 (601-3A, 601-3R, and 604 Variants) airplanes. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on April 11, 2025 (90 FR 15419). The NPRM was prompted by AD CF-2024-16, dated May 23, 2024 (also referred to as the MCAI), issued by Transport Canada, which is the aviation authority for Canada. The MCAI states that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations have been developed. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. The FAA is issuing this AD to address new or more restrictive limitations. Failure to comply with these new or more restrictive limitations could adversely affect the continued airworthiness of the airplane. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0616. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from Bombardier. The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Changing Reference to Website</HD> Bombardier requested updating the reference to its website because the customer portal link can be hard to find on some Support and Customer Services pages. To make access easier, Bombardier recommended providing a direct secure link to the portal. Furthermore, Bombardier stated that prefixing the website reference with “ <E T="03">https://</E> ” ensures a secure connection to the Bombardier customer portal, enhancing security and helping prevent man-in-the-middle attacks in certain regions. The FAA agrees with updating the reference to the Bombardier website. The FAA has changed “ <E T="03">bombardier.com</E> ” to read “ <E T="03">https://my.bombardier.com/”</E> to ensure a secure connection to the Bombardier customer portal and that the website is up-to-date and clearly presented. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Revise “New and More Restrictive” Statement</HD> Bombardier requested that the phrase “new and more restrictive limitations” be revised to “new or more restrictive limitations” throughout the final rule. Bombardier explained that the phrase “new and more restrictive” could be misinterpreted as applying only to limitations that are both new and more restrictive, potentially excluding newly introduced airworthiness limitation (AWL) tasks that are not necessarily more restrictive. Bombardier asserted that using “new or more restrictive” is more accurate, all-encompassing, and less likely to cause confusion. The FAA agrees with the requested use of the term “new or more restrictive limitations” throughout the final rule. This terminology is consistent with the standard language used in current ADs. The FAA has revised this AD accordingly. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Changing the Description of the Limitations</HD> Bombardier requested that the sentence in the third paragraph under the “Background” Section of the proposed AD that specifies “The new and more restrictive limitations include tasks and limitations . . .” be revised to include the phrase: “new limitation tasks, as well as existing limitation tasks for which additional effectivity was added, a threshold or repeat interval was reduced, a discard time was reduced, or an inspection method was changed.” The FAA acknowledges that Bombardier is identifying additional changes within the airworthiness limitation tasks. However, the FAA disagrees with revising this final rule as suggested by Bombardier because that level of detail of how specific airworthiness limitation tasks have changed is not necessary. The FAA considers the existing language in this AD to be sufficient to describe the applicable time limits/maintenance checks (TLMC) documents and, therefore, has not changed this AD in this regard. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Removal of Sections That Do Not Apply</HD> Bombardier requested the removal of Sections 5-20-00, 5-30-20, and 5-70-00 from the proposed AD, as Transport Canada AD CF-2024-16, dated May 23, 2024, references the AWL within the TLMC documents. The FAA agrees to remove Sections 5-20-00, 5-30-20, and 5-70-00 after confirming with Transport Canada that the intent of the MCAI applies only to Section 5-10-00, “Airworthiness Limitations.” Therefore, the FAA has removed reference to Sections 5-20-00, 5-30-20, and 5-70-00 from this AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Mandate Additional TLMCs and Temporary Revisions</HD> Bombardier requested that the FAA mandate all new or more restrictive limitations included in the latest published TLMC revisions. Bombardier noted that numerous Temporary Revisions (TRs) have been issued, containing updated or more restrictive limitations that should be incorporated into operators' aircraft maintenance programs. Bombardier explained that if the FAA decides not to mandate the latest TLMC revisions and associated TRs, a subparagraph should be added to the proposed AD to provide credit to operators who voluntarily incorporate these revisions, or any subsequently approved TLMC revisions, into their maintenance programs. The FAA disagrees with mandating all new or more restrictive limitations included in the latest published TLMC revisions and the associated TRs issued thereafter. The FAA notes that Transport Canada has not issued an AD requiring these later TLMC revisions and TRs. In addition, to require more restrictive limitations than those identified in the proposed AD would necessitate (under the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act) reissuing the notice, reopening the period for public comment, considering additional comments subsequently received, and eventually issuing a final rule. In light of this, the FAA has determined that further delay of this AD is not appropriate. The FAA has determined that an unsafe condition exists and that incorporating the limitations specified in this AD must be done to ensure continued safety. The FAA might consider additional rulemaking in the future to mandate new or more restrictive limitations. Therefore, the FAA has not revised this AD in this regard. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Exclude Service Information From Website</HD> Bombardier requested exclusion of the required service information that is incorporated by reference from public posting on the regulations.gov online docket and identified that service information as Confidential Business Information (CBI). Bombardier asserted that a paper copy may be incorporated by reference in the Library of Congress version. Bombardier explained that the listed service information is reasonably available through the normal distribution channels or as identified in ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━