Airworthiness Directives; Bell Textron Canada Limited Helicopters

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-3436; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00314-R]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Bell Textron Canada Limited Helicopters</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 Bell Textron Canada Limited (Bell) Model 407 helicopters. This proposed AD was prompted by a report of a fractured pilot cyclic stick tube and subsequent findings of other pilot cyclic stick tubes with fatigue cracking. This proposed AD would require repetitively inspecting the pilot cyclic stick tube assembly for a crack and, depending on the results, repairing or replacing the pilot cyclic stick tube assembly. 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-2025-3436; 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 Transport Canada material identified in this proposed AD, contact Transport Canada, Transport Canada National Aircraft Certification, 159 Cleopatra Drive, Nepean, Ontario, K1A 0N5, Canada; phone: (888) 663-3639; email: <E T="03">tc.airworthinessdirectives-consignesdenavigabilite</E> . <E T="03">TC@tc.gc.ca</E> ; website: <E T="03">tc.canada.ca/en/aviation</E> . You may find the Transport Canada material on the Transport Canada website at <E T="03">tc.canada.ca/en/aviation</E> . • You may view this material at the FAA, Office of the Regional Counsel, Southwest Region, 10101 Hillwood Parkway, Room 6N-321, Fort Worth, TX 76177. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Alexis Whitaker, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (516) 228-7309; email: <E T="03">alexis.j.whitaker@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-2025-3436; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00314-R” 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 Alexis Whitaker, 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> Transport Canada, which is the aviation authority for Canada, has issued Transport Canada AD CF-2024-18, dated May 29, 2024 (Transport Canada AD CF-2024-18) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on Bell Model 407 helicopters, serial numbers 53000 through 53900, 53911 through 53999, 54000 through 54166, 54300 through 54800, 54805 through 54999, 56300 through 56305, and 56311 through 56315, installed with a pilot cyclic stick tube assembly part number (P/N) 206-001-342-101 or 206-001-342-101FM. The MCAI states that Bell received a report that a pilot cyclic stick tube assembly having P/N 206-001-342-101 fractured at the lower end of the tube near the upper slotted area where it is held in place in the pivot assembly. Examination of the fractured pilot cyclic stick tube and subsequent findings of other cracked pilot cyclic stick tubes revealed fatigue cracking. Further investigation identified the root cause of the pilot cyclic stick tube cracking as the application of excessive force to the cyclic stick during the freedom of movement of the controls and cyclic centering light operation check as part of the interior and prestart check, which resulted in elevated stress at the slotted area and was aggravated by the high stress concentration design feature of the upper slotted area. This condition, if not detected and corrected, could lead to an in-flight failure of the pilot cyclic stick tube and consequent loss of control of the helicopter. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-3436. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Transport Canada AD CF-2024-18, which specifies procedures for revising the applicable Bell 407 rotorcraft flight manual (RFM) Normal Procedures section to limit the allowable freedom of movement during interior and prestart checks for certain serial-numbered helicopters (Group 1 helicopters). Transport Canada AD CF-2024-18 also specifies procedures for inspecting the pilot cyclic stick tube assembly for cracks and replacing or repairing and reidentifying any cracked pilot cyclic stick tube assembly for certain serial-numbered helicopters (Group 2 helicopters). If, as a result of an inspection, a pilot cyclic stick tube assembly is repaired rather than replaced, Transport Canada AD CF-2024-18 further specifies procedures for repetitive inspections of the repaired pilot cyclic stick tube assembly and replacement within 24 months after the repair. 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 (CAA) 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">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 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 Transport Canada AD CF-2024-18 by reference in the FAA final rule. This proposed AD would, therefore, require compliance with Transport Canada AD CF-2024-18 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. Material referenced in Transport Canada AD CF-2024-18 for compliance will be available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-3436 after the FAA final rule is published. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in Transport Canada AD CF-2024-18, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this AD. See ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━