Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-0479; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00436-T; Amendment 39-23172; AD 2025-20-19]</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) 2016-14-03, which applied to all Airbus SAS Model A319-111, -112, -113, -114, -115, -131, -132, and -133 airplanes; Model A320-211, -212, -214, -231, -232, and -233 airplanes; and Model A321-111, -112, -131, -211, -212, -213, -231, and -232 airplanes. AD 2016-14-03 required reinforcing the forward pressure bulkhead at a certain stringer on both the left-hand and right-hand sides and doing related investigative and corrective actions if necessary. Since the FAA issued AD 2016-14-03, new crack findings have prompted the need for repetitive inspections of the area. This AD continues to require the actions in AD 2016-14-03, adds repetitive inspections of structure at a certain frame and applicable corrective actions, provides a terminating action for the repetitive inspections, and revises the applicability by removing airplanes and adding certain airplane models. 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 January 2, 2026. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of January 2, 2026. </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-2025-0479; 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-2025-0479. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Nicholas Benson, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3647; email: <E T="03">nicholas.h.benson@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 2016-14-03, Amendment 39-18584 (81 FR 44496, July 8, 2016) (AD 2016-14-03). AD 2016-14-03 applied to all Airbus SAS Model A319-111, -112, -113, -114, -115, -131, -132, and -133 airplanes; Model A320-211, -212, -214, -231, -232, and -233 airplanes; and Model A321-111, -112, -131, -211, -212, -213, -231, and -232 airplanes. AD 2016-14-03 required reinforcing the forward pressure bulkhead at a certain stringer on both the left-hand and right-hand sides and doing related investigative and corrective actions if necessary. The FAA issued AD 2016-14-03 to prevent fatigue cracking of the forward pressure bulkhead, which could result in reduced structural integrity of the airplane. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on March 27, 2025 (90 FR 13848). The NPRM was prompted by AD 2024-0147R1, dated August 7, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0147R1) (also referred to as “the MCAI”), issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. The MCAI states that after EASA AD 2014-0209 was issued, several findings of cracks were reported in service during application of Airworthiness Limitation Item (ALI) tasks 532166 and 533186. As a result of these findings, Airbus has developed different thresholds and inspection requirements compared to those specified in ALI tasks 532166 and 533186 and requires those inspections until a modification is done. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to continue to require the actions in AD 2016-14-03. The FAA also proposed to add repetitive inspections of structure at a certain frame and applicable corrective actions, provide a terminating action for the repetitive inspections, and revise the applicability by removing airplanes and adding certain airplane models, as specified in EASA AD 2024-0147R1. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these airplane products. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-0479. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received a comment from United Airlines who supported the NPRM without change. The FAA received additional comments from American Airlines (American), Delta Air Lines (Delta), and ProTech Aero Services Limited (ProTech). The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Confirm Use of Later Revisions Is Allowed</HD> ProTech requested the FAA confirm that the proposed AD would allow the use of later-approved revisions of the material specified in EASA AD 2024-0147R1, as acceptable for compliance with the AD requirements. This AD does allow the use of later-approved revisions of the material referenced in EASA AD 2024-0147R1 as acceptable for compliance with the required actions. This AD adopts the “Ref. Publications” section of EASA AD 2024-0147R1, which includes the current version of the referenced material as well as later approved revisions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Provide Credit for Actions Accomplished per a Certain Service Bulletin</HD> Delta requested the FAA confirm that accomplishment of Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1372, dated May 15, 2018, instead of Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1268, Revision 03, dated May 7, 2015, suffices for taking credit for paragraph (4) of EASA AD 2024-0147R1. If the FAA agrees, then Delta requested the FAA add a new exception to paragraph (h) of the proposed AD to specify, where paragraph (4) of EASA AD 2024-0147R1 states “in accordance with the instructions of Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1268,” this AD considers Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1372 as acceptable for compliance. Delta requested the new exception because paragraph (4) of the EASA AD 2024-0147R1 does not mention Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1372, and the FAA's NPRM does not address Delta's concern. Delta stated it received an acceptable method of compliance (AMOC) to FAA AD 2016-14-03 (via AMOC Letter No. AIR-676-18-307, dated July 20, 2018) that allowed use of Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1372 instead of Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1268 and would like to take credit for previous compliance actions for its applicable airplanes. The FAA partially agrees. The FAA agrees that, for certain airplane serial numbers, the modification specified in paragraph (3) of EASA AD 2024-0147R1 may be accomplished using the original issue of Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1372, dated May 15, 2018, or later approved revisions, but disagrees that an exception is needed to provide credit for accomplishing the modification using the original issue of that service bulletin before the effective date of this AD. EASA AD 2024-0147R1 defines “the applicable modification SB” as Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1268, Revision 01, or Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1372, as applicable to the manufacturer serial number. Since no revision number is cited for Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1372 in the definition, this means operators may use any revision of the service bulletin specified in the “Ref. Publications” paragraph of the EASA AD, as applicable, to accomplish the modification. However, paragraph (4) of EASA AD 2024-0147R1 is necessary to provide credit for any modification done before the effective date of this AD using the original issue of Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1268, dated January 8, 2013, because the definition only cites Revision 01 of that service bulletin. The FAA has not changed the AD in this regard. The FAA clarifies that AMOCs approved previously for AD 2016-14-03 are approved as AMOCs for the corresponding provisions of EASA AD 2024-0147R1 that are required by paragraph (g) of this AD. The FAA has revised paragraph (i) of this AD accordingly. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Correct Part Numbers</HD> American requested the FAA revise the proposed AD to allow use of the correct part numbers as an AMOC to certain part numbers specified in Figure A-GBAAG—Sheet 02 of Airbus Service Bulletin A320-53-1383, dated March 5, 2019. American stated that, while incorporating changes found in Airbus Service Bulletin Information Transmission (SBIT) 19-0038, Revision 03, dated February 10, 2025, it found an error in the figure, and Airbus confirmed that certain part numbers in the tables and instructions for COMPD07 of subtasks 531383-420-202-001 and 531383-420-204-001 should be corrected. The FAA agrees there is an error in Airbus Service ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━