Airworthiness Directives; Embraer S.A. Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-3993; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00630-A]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Embraer S.A. Airplanes</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 certain Embraer S.A. (Embraer) Model EMB-505 airplanes. This proposed AD was prompted by the possibility that some airplanes may have invalid horizontal stabilizer (HS) backlash test results due to the use of incorrect procedures. This proposed AD would require inspecting the airplane's left-hand (LH) and right-hand (RH) HS backlash and replacement, as applicable, of certain hinge point and pitch trim actuator attachment parts and the pitch trim actuator. 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 January 2, 2026. </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-2025-3993; 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 Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil (ANAC) material identified in this proposed AD, contact ANAC, Continuing Airworthiness Technical Branch (GTAC), Rua Doutor Orlando Feirabend Filho, 230—Centro Empresarial Aquarius—Torre B—Andares 14 a 18, Parque Residencial Aquarius, CEP 12.246-190—São José dos Campos—SP, Brazil; phone: 55 (12) 3203-6600; email: <E T="03">pac@anac.gov.br</E> ; website: <E T="03">anac.gov.br/en/</E> . You may find this material on the ANAC website at <E T="03">sistemas.anac.gov.br/certificacao/DA/DAE.asp</E> . • You may view this material at the FAA, Airworthiness Products Section, Operational Safety Branch, 901 Locust, Kansas City, MO 64106. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jim Rutherford, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (816) 329-4165; email: <E T="03">jim.rutherford@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 <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-3993; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00630-A” 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 Jim Rutherford, 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> ANAC, which is the aviation authority for Brazil, has issued ANAC AD 2025-04-01, dated April 15, 2025 (ANAC AD 2025-04-01) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on certain serial-numbered Embraer Model EMB-505 airplanes. The MCAI states that there is a possibility of some airplanes having invalid HS backlash test results due to the use of incorrect test procedures. The excessive backlash may result in an aeroelastic phenomenon exposing the surrounding structure and systems to unacceptable vibration levels and reduced controllability of the airplane. To address this unsafe condition, the MCAI specifies inspecting the airplane LH and RH HS backlash and replacing, as applicable, the LH and RH hinge point attachment parts, the LH or RH pitch trim actuator rod-end attachment parts, and the pitch trim actuator. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-3993. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed ANAC AD 2025-04-01, which specifies procedures for inspecting the LH and RH HS backlash for correct values, and replacing, as applicable, the LH and RH hinge point attachment parts, the LH or RH pitch trim actuator rod-end attachment parts, and the pitch trim actuator. 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 ANAC AD 2025-04-01 described previously, 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 general discussion of these differences. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Differences Between This Proposed AD and the MCAI</HD> The material specified in ANAC AD 2025-04-01 allows the use of alternative or similar parts in place of the ones specified in the kits, provided these alternative or similar parts are approved by Embraer, but this proposed AD would require approval from either the Manager, International Validation Branch, FAA; ANAC; or ANAC's authorized Designee. If approved by the ANAC Designee, the approval must include the Designee's authorized signature. <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 compliance with requirements for corresponding FAA ADs. The FAA has been coordinating this process with manufacturers and CAAs. As a result, the FAA proposes to incorporate ANAC AD 2025-04-01 by reference in the FAA final rule. This proposed AD would, therefore, require compliance with ANAC AD 2025-04-01 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed. Material required by ANAC AD 2025-04-01 for compliance will be available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-3993 after the FAA final rule is published. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD, if adopted as proposed, would affect 50 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this proposed AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,r100,10,10,12"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Action</CHED> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> Cost on U.S. operators </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Inspect HS backlash</ENT> <ENT>16 work-hours × $85 per hour = $1,360</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>$1,360</ENT> <ENT>$68,000</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA estimates ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━