Airworthiness Directives; Dassault Aviation Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-1729; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00568-T; Amendment 39-23183; AD 2025-22-05]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Dassault Aviation 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) 2022-12-10, which applied to certain Dassault Aviation Model FALCON 7X airplanes. AD 2022-12-10 required revising the existing airplane flight manual (AFM) to provide emergency procedures for inconsistent or unreliable flight data, emergency and abnormal operations procedures for the generic input/output (GEN I/O) internal module failure, and emergency procedures for additional information. AD 2022-12-10 also required revising the existing minimum equipment list (MEL) for the multi-function probe heating, air data, and inertial reference systems. Since the FAA issued AD 2022-12-10, the manufacturer developed modifications that fix a weak point in the avionics architecture. This AD continues to require the actions in AD 2022-12-10 and removes certain airplanes from the applicability. This AD also requires modification of the avionics system and related revisions to the existing AFM and MEL. 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-2025-1729; 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-2025-1729. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> William Reisenauer, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: 516-228-7301; email: <E T="03">9-AVS-AIR-BACO-COS@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 2022-12-10, Amendment 39-22082 (87 FR 45246, July 28, 2022) (AD 2022-12-10). AD 2022-12-10 applied to all Dassault Aviation Model FALCON 7X airplanes, except airplanes having Dassault modification M2091 embodied in production. AD 2022-12-10 required revising the existing AFM to provide emergency procedures for inconsistent or unreliable flight data, emergency and abnormal operations procedures for the GEN I/O internal module failure, and emergency procedures for additional information. AD 2022-12-10 also required revising the operator's existing FAA-approved MEL items for the multi-function probe heating, air data, and inertial reference systems. The FAA issued AD 2022-12-10 to address misleading data on display units, which could reduce safety margins and lead to increased pilot workload, possibly resulting in reduced controllability of the airplane. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on August 6, 2025 (90 FR 37810). The NPRM was prompted by AD 2023-0003R1, dated September 26, 2024 (EASA AD 2023-0003R1) (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 EASA superseded EASA AD 2021-0197, dated August 23, 2021 (which corresponds to AD 2022-12-10), with EASA AD 2022-0145, dated July 12, 2022 (EASA AD 2022-0145). EASA AD 2022-0145 was issued to retain the requirements of EASA AD 2021-0197, exclude airplanes on which Dassault modification M2091 was embodied in production, and require airplane serial numbers (S/Ns) 402 and subsequent with the “EASy III—2nd CERT” or “EASy III—3rd CERT” standard to upgrade the avionics architecture to the “EASY III—4th CERT” standard (modification M2091). EASA AD 2022-0145, in turn, was superseded by EASA AD 2023-0003, dated January 6, 2023 (EASA AD 2023-0003). EASA AD 2023-0003 was issued to retain the requirements of EASA AD 2022-0145, exclude airplanes on which Dassault modification M2096 or M2097 was embodied in production, and require airplane S/Ns 2 through 400 inclusive to upgrade the avionics architecture to the “EASy II—5th CERT” standard (modification M2096 or M2097, as applicable). Since EASA AD 2023-0003 was issued, Dassault developed modifications M2055 (for airplane S/Ns 2 through 400 inclusive) and M2059 (for airplane S/Ns 402 and subsequent) that upgrade the avionics architecture to the “EASy IV” standard and issued Dassault Service Bulletin 7X-600, dated November 7, 2022; Dassault Service Bulletin 7X-601, April 24, 2023; and Dassault Service Bulletin 7X-602, June 3, 2023; as applicable, to provide in-service modification instructions. EASA AD 2023-0003 was subsequently revised by EASA AD 2023-0003R1 to exclude airplanes on which modifications M2055 or M2059 were embodied in production and allow incorporation of those modifications in service as an optional method of compliance for modifications M2091, M2096, or M2097, as applicable. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to continue to require the actions in AD 2022-12-10 and remove from the applicability airplanes on which Dassault modification M2055, M2059, M2096, or M2097 were embodied in production. The FAA also proposed to require modification of the avionics system and related revisions to the existing AFM and MEL, as specified in EASA AD 2023-0003R1. 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-2025-1729. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received no comments on the NPRM or on the determination of the cost to the public. <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 2023-0003R1, which specifies revising the (1) existing AFM to provide emergency procedures for inconsistent or unreliable flight data and emergency and abnormal operations procedures for the GEN I/O internal module failure; (2) existing FAA-approved MEL items for the multi-function probe heating, air data, and inertial reference systems and modular avionic unit (MAU) #1B; and (3) operational suitability manual—flight crew (OSM-FC). This material also specifies procedures for modifying the avionics system and incorporating related AFM and MEL revisions. This material also describes optional procedures for modifying the avionics architecture to the “EASy IV” standard, revising the existing AFM to incorporate revision 6 or revision 25, as applicable, and revising the existing FAA-approved MEL to incorporate revision 16. Accomplishing the optional modification and AFM revision is an acceptable method of compliance for the applicable modification that upgrades the avionics architecture to “EASy III—4th CERT” or “EASy II—5th CERT” and related AFM revision. In addition, accomplishing the optional MEL revision is an acceptable method of compliance for the corresponding revisions to MEL items for the multi-function probe heating, air data, and inertial reference systems and MAU #1B. 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">Interim Action</HD> The preamble to AD 2022-12-10 specifies that the FAA considers that AD “interim action” and that the FAA might consider further rulemaking if a final action is identified. The manufacturer has since developed modifications ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> software upgrades) that fix a weak point in the avionics architecture to address the unsafe condition. The FAA has determine ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━