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-2025-0347; Project Identifier AD-2024-00441-T; Amendment 39-23156; AD 2025-20-03]</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 787-8, 787-9, and 787-10 airplanes. This AD was prompted by reports of corrosion on one or more of the eight lower fitting assemblies and adjacent lavatory components on certain lavatories. This AD requires a detailed inspection of the lower fitting assemblies and the centerline partition threshold of the lavatories for corrosion, recording on the modification record placard, and applicable on-condition actions. This AD also requires revising the existing maintenance program to incorporate a detailed inspection of the lavatory vertical side forward fittings for corrosion or damage. 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 November 6, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of November 6, 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-2025-0347; 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, 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 the Boeing material identified in this AD, contact Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Attention: Contractual & Data Services (C&DS), 2600 Westminster Blvd., MC 110-SK57, Seal Beach, CA 90740-5600; telephone 562-797-1717; website <E T="03">myboeingfleet.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-2025-0347. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Nicole S. Tsang, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3959; email: <E T="03">Nicole.S.Tsang@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 787-8, 787-9, and 787-10 airplanes. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on April 7, 2025 (90 FR 14927). The NPRM was prompted by reports of corrosion on one or more of the eight lower fitting assemblies and adjacent lavatory components on certain lavatories. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require a detailed inspection of the lower fitting assemblies and the centerline partition threshold of the lavatories for corrosion, recording on the modification record placard, and applicable on-condition actions. The FAA also proposed to require revising the existing maintenance program to incorporate a detailed inspection of the lavatory vertical side forward fittings for corrosion or damage. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from ProTech Aero Services Limited who supported the NPRM without change. The FAA received additional comments from five commenters, including All Nippon Airways (All Nippon), American Airlines (American), Boeing, and an anonymous commenter. The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Exclude Certain Airplanes From the Applicability</HD> American requested that the FAA revise the applicability of the proposed AD to exclude Model 787-8, 787-9, and 787-10 airplanes that have never been equipped with Jamco family 95/96 lavatories. American noted Boeing Special Attention Requirements Bulletin B787-81205-SB250302-00 RB, Issue 001, dated August 21, 2024, identifies airplanes that were delivered with and without the Jamco family 95/96 lavatories and airplanes known to have been modified to be equipped with the affected lavatories. American also noted the requirements bulletin includes conditions to account for airplanes that may have been modified to either remove or install the affected lavatories. Based on this, American concluded the proposed AD is only applicable to airplanes that have, or have had, Jamco family 95/96 lavatories installed, and airplanes that have never had the affected lavatories installed are exempted from the inspections specified in the proposed AD. The FAA agrees to exclude airplanes that were neither delivered with the affected lavatories, nor equipped with the affected lavatories after delivery. These airplanes are identified as Group 3, Configuration 1, and Group 4, Configuration 3 airplanes in table 1 of the requirements bulletin, and no actions are required for those airplanes. The FAA has revised paragraph (c) of this AD accordingly. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Extend the Inspection Compliance Time</HD> United requested that the FAA extend the compliance time for the inspection by 3 months. United stated that the proposed compliance time does not allow it to schedule the inspection for all of its affected airplanes during base maintenance visits, which would force some of its airplanes out of service. The FAA disagrees with commenter's request. The FAA assessed the risk and determined that the inspection compliance times specified in the “Compliance” paragraph of Boeing Special Attention Requirements Bulletin B787-81205-SB250302-00 RB, Issue 001, dated August 21, 2024, are appropriate to mitigate the risk. The FAA considered the safety implications and normal maintenance schedules when establishing compliance times that adequately address the unsafe condition of this AD. However, under the provisions of paragraph (k) of this AD, the FAA will consider requests for approval of an extension of the compliance time if sufficient data are submitted to substantiate that the new compliance time would provide an acceptable level of safety. The FAA has not changed the AD in this regard. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Coordinate Inspection Intervals With Operators</HD> A commenter requested that the FAA closely coordinate with operators to carefully define the inspection intervals to ensure operators can achieve compliance with minimal possible operational disruption. The FAA acknowledges the commenter's request but has not revised the AD in this regard for the same reasons noted in the FAA's response to the previous comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Revise Compliance Time for Placard Recording and Maintenance Plan Revision</HD> Boeing requested the FAA add a note to paragraph (g) of the proposed AD to allow accomplishing the placard recording (condition 1, action 1 and condition 2, action 2) and maintenance plan revision (condition 1, action 2 and condition 2, action 3) within 38 months after completing the initial inspection. Boeing noted that Boeing Special Attention Requirements Bulletin B787-81205-SB250302-00 RB, Issue 001, dated August 21, 2024, specifies those actions should be completed before further flight after the inspection. Boeing, however, asserted those actions are not critical to flight safety and should not be required to be done before further flight for an airplane to return to service. Boeing stated it has no plans to revise the requirements bulletin to account for this. The FAA partially agrees with the commenter's request. The FAA agrees that the placard recording and maintenance plan revision are administrative changes that are not critical to flight safety. However, the FAA disagrees with extending the compliance time to 38 months after accomplishing the inspection. The FAA has determined that extending the compliance time to 90 days after accomplishing the inspection or repair instructions, as applicable, is an appropriate time for accomplishing the administrative actions. Accordingly, the FAA has added a new exception to paragraph (h)(2) of this AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Reference Interim Actions</HD> All Nippon requested that the FAA revise the proposed AD to reference any interim action, such as a service bulletin or other relevant measure, if one is issued before the proposed AD is finalized. The FAA acknowledges the commenter's request, but no change is necessary to the AD in this regard. The FAA has determined no later service information or any other measure that would affect AD compliance has been issued in the interim. The FAA has not changed the AD in this regard. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for an Alternative Method of Compliance (AMOC)</HD> Boeing requested that the FAA revise the proposed AD to allow accomplishment of the inspection in accordance with maintenance review board report (MRBR) Item Number 25-185-00 for lavatories with no previous repairs as an AMOC to accomplishing the inspection in accordance with paragraph 3.A., step (3) of the Accomplishment Instructions of Jamco Service Bulletin B80- ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━