Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0470; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00579-T; Amendment 39-23165; AD 2025-20-12]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS 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) 2023-02-18, which applied to certain Airbus SAS Model A350-941 and -1041 airplanes. AD 2023-02-18 required revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. Since the FAA issued AD 2023-02-18, the FAA has determined that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations are necessary. This AD continues to require certain actions in AD 2023-02-18, and 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 December 30, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of December 30, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain other publication listed in this AD as of March 23, 2023 (88 FR 10020, February 16, 2023). </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-2025-0470; 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 European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) material identified in this AD, contact EASA, Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer 3, 50668 Cologne, Germany; telephone +49 221 8999 000; email <E T="03">ADs@easa.europa.eu.</E> You may find this material on the EASA website at <E T="03">ad.easa.europa.eu.</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-2025-0470. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Dan Rodina, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3225; email: <E T="03">dan.rodina@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 2023-02-18, Amendment 39-22325 (88 FR 10020, February 16, 2023) (AD 2023-02-18). AD 2023-02-18 applied to certain Airbus SAS Model A350-941 and -1041 airplanes. AD 2023-02-18 required revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. The FAA issued AD 2023-02-18 to address the potential failure of certain life-limited parts, which could result in reduced structural integrity of the airplane. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on March 21, 2025 (90 FR 13311). The NPRM was prompted by AD 2024-0189, dated October 1, 2024, issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union (EASA AD 2024-0189) (also referred to as the MCAI). The MCAI states that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations have been developed. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to continue to require certain actions in AD 2023-02-18 and to require revising the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, to incorporate new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations, as specified in EASA AD 2024-0189. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0470. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received a comment from the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA), who supported the NPRM without change. The FAA also received a comment from ProTech Aero Services Limited. The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Confirm Intent To Allow Later Approved Revisions</HD> ProTech Aero Services requested confirmation that the FAA intended to allow the use of later approved revisions of service information to comply with the proposed AD. The commenter noted that EASA AD 2024-0189 states that it allows use of later approved revisions in the Ref. Publications section. The FAA confirms that it intends to allow the use of applicable later Airworthiness Limitations Section (ALS) revisions to comply with the requirements of this AD. This AD refers to EASA AD 2024-0189 as the appropriate source of service information for accomplishing the required actions. EASA AD 2024-0189 includes the Ref. Publications section which accepts the use of later approved variations or revisions of the referenced ALS document for compliance. Therefore, applicable later approved ALS revisions are acceptable. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conclusion</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 reviewed the relevant data, considered any comments received, and determined that air safety requires adopting this AD as proposed. Accordingly, the FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. Except for minor editorial changes, this AD is adopted as proposed in the NPRM. None of the changes will increase the economic burden on any operator. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2024-0189, which specifies new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations for airplane structures and safe life limits. This AD also requires EASA AD 2022-0124, dated June 28, 2022, which the Director of the Federal Register approved for incorporation by reference as of March 23, 2023 (88 FR 10020, February 16, 2023). 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">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD affects 34 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD: The FAA estimates the total cost per operator for the retained actions from AD 2023-02-18 to be $7,650 (90 work-hours × $85 per work-hour). The FAA has determined that revising the existing maintenance or inspection program takes an average of 90 work-hours per operator, although the agency recognizes that this number may vary from operator to operator. Since operators incorporate maintenance or inspection program changes for their affected fleet(s), the FAA has determined that a per-operator estimate is more accurate than a per-airplane estimate. The FAA estimates the total cost per operator for the new actions to be $7,650 (90 work-hours × $85 per work-hour). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Authority for This Rulemaking</HD> Title 49 of the United States Code specifies the FAA's authority to issue rules on aviation safety. Subtitle I, section 106, describes the authority of the FAA Administrator. Subtitle VII: Aviation Programs, describes in more detail the scope of the Agency's authority. The FAA is issuing this rulemaking under the authority described in Subtitle VII, Part A, Subpart III, Section 44701: General requirements. Under that section, Congress charges the FAA with promoting safe flight of civil aircraft in air commerce by prescribing regulations for practices, methods, and procedures the Administrator finds necessary for safety in air commerce. This regulation is within the scope of that authority because it addresses an unsafe condition that is likely to exist or develop on products identified in this rulemaking action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Findings</HD> This AD will not have federalism implications under Executive Order 13132. This AD will not have a substantial direct effect on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government. For the reasons discussed above, I certify that this AD: (1) Is not a “significant regulatory action” under Executive Order 12866, (2) Will not affect intrastate aviation in Alaska, and (3) Will not have a significant economic impact, positive or negative, on a substantial number of small entities under the criteria of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. <LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HED">List of Subjects in 14 CFR Part 39</HD> Air transportation, Aircraft, Aviation safety, Incorporation by reference, Safety. </LSTSUB> <HD ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━