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-2025-0196; Project Identifier AD-2024-00250-T; Amendment 39-23157; AD 2025-20-04]</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 superseding Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2019-12-13, which applied to all The Boeing Company Model 757 airplanes. AD 2019-12-13 required repetitive checks of the aileron trim actuator bearing for free rotation, repetitive detailed inspections of the aileron trim actuator attachment lug for damage and cracking, and applicable on-condition actions. This AD was prompted by the determination that a modification must be done to address the unsafe condition. This AD retains the actions in AD 2019-12-13. This AD also requires for certain airplanes changing the lateral control box support assembly and installing an aileron trim actuator bracket, and for certain other airplanes replacing the existing actuator lateral control fitting with an aileron trim actuator bracket, which terminates the repetitive checks and inspections. 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 certain publications listed in this AD as of November 6, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain other publication listed in this AD as of July 12, 2019 (84 FR 30577, June 27, 2019). </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-2025-0196; 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-2025-0196. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Katherine Venegas, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 562-627-5353; email: <E T="03">katherine.venegas@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 to supersede AD 2019-12-13, Amendment 39-19668 (84 FR 30577, June 27, 2019) (AD 2019-12-13). AD 2019-12-13 applied to all The Boeing Company Model 757 airplanes. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on February 12, 2025 (90 FR 9403). The NPRM was prompted by the determination that a modification must be done to address the unsafe condition. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to continue to require the actions in AD 2019-12-13. The NPRM also proposed to require for certain airplanes a change to the lateral control box support assembly and installation of an aileron trim actuator bracket, and for certain other airplanes replacement of the existing actuator lateral control fitting with an aileron trim actuator bracket, which terminates the repetitive checks and inspections. The FAA is issuing this AD to address failure of the aileron trim actuator attachment lug and subsequent loss of feel force, wheel centering, and lateral trim. The unsafe condition, if not corrected, could cause over-control of the airplane and subsequent lateral pilot-induced oscillations that could adversely affect continued safe flight and landing. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA), Aviation Partners Boeing, Boeing, United Airlines, and one individual who supported the NPRM without change. The FAA received additional comments from two commenters, including Delta Air Lines (Delta) and two individuals. One of the comments was outside the scope of this AD. The following presents the relevant 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> Aviation Partners Boeing stated that the installation of winglets per Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) ST01518SE does not affect compliance with the proposed AD. The FAA agrees with the commenter that STC ST01518SE does not affect the accomplishment of the manufacturer's service instructions. Therefore, the installation of STC ST01518SE 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 Compliance Time</HD> An individual requested that the FAA change the compliance time for the modification to a phased approach, such as a 24- to 36-month compliance window, to allow operators to accomplish fleet modifications efficiently without disrupting flight operations. The commenter stated that, given the scale of this modification across the Boeing Model 757 fleet, implementing the modifications during scheduled heavy maintenance checks would minimize airplane downtime and supply chain constraints. The commenter also stated that rushing to implement the modifications could lead to parts shortages, maintenance upholds, and operational disruptions. The commenter concluded that a risk-based prioritization approach could ensure higher-risk airplanes are addressed first while maintaining operational stability, and that a flexible timeline will help achieve the intended safety improvements effectively. The FAA disagrees with changing the compliance time. In developing an appropriate compliance time for this AD, the FAA considered the recommendations of the manufacturer, the urgency associated with the subject unsafe condition, the availability of required parts, and the practical aspect of accomplishing the required modification within a period of time that corresponds to the normal scheduled maintenance for most affected operators. In consideration of these items, the FAA has determined that compliance time of within 10,000 flight hours or 30 months from the effective date of the AD, whichever occurs first, will ensure an acceptable level of safety. 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 also clarifies that operators are allowed to implement the modification at any time within the compliance period during their normal scheduled maintenance. The FAA has not changed the AD in this regard. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Add Note to Paragraph (i) of Proposed AD</HD> Delta requested that the FAA add a note to paragraph (i) of the proposed AD that refers operators to Boeing Alert Requirements Bulletin 757-27A0160 RB, dated April 1, 2024, as a global acceptable method of compliance (AMOC) to the requirement in paragraph (h) of the proposed AD. Paragraph (h) proposed to require doing the repair using a method approved in accordance with the procedures specified in the AMOC paragraph of the proposed AD instead of contacting Boeing for repair instructions, as specified in Boeing Alert Requirements Bulletin 757-27A0159 RB, dated March 29, 2019, and Revision 1, dated April 29, 2020. The commenter stated that every operator that has not requested Boeing Alert Requirements Bulletin 757-27A0160 RB as an AMOC to paragraph (h) of the proposed AD would each have to submit an AMOC request to use that service bulletin in lieu of repair instructions. Delta stated that identifying Boeing Alert Requirements Bulletin 757-27A0160 RB as an AMOC in the proposed AD would reduce strain on operators and the FAA in processing AMOC requests. The FAA disagrees with the request. An AMOC to the inspections required by paragraph (g) of this AD, along with the exception in paragraph (h) of this AD, is not necessary if the operator performs the modification in paragraph (i) of this AD. As stated in paragraph (i) of this AD, doing the modification required by this paragraph terminates the inspections required by paragraph (g) of this AD. The FAA has not changed the AD in this regard. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Fix Typographical Errors in Service Information</HD> Delta requested that the FAA address typographical errors in Boeing Service Bulletin 757-27A0160, dated April 1, 2024. Delta stated that under step 2 of “Part 2: Feel and Trim Mechanism Assembly and Aileron Trim Actuator Installation,” the second substep should be renumbered from “a.” to “b.” and the text of that substep should be changed from “Install kept the . . .” to “Install the kept . . . .” Delta also stated that substep 3.a. of “Part 3: Restoration,” should be chan ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 26k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━