Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-5043; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00780-R]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus 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 all Airbus Helicopters Model AS332C, AS332C1, AS332L, AS332L1, and SA330J helicopters. This proposed AD was prompted by reports of fatigue cracks found on arms of the tail rotor (TR) pitch change spider due to a load increase originating from degraded bearing stacks. This proposed AD would introduce reduced life limit intervals for the affected bearing stack and would require replacing the affected bearing stack before exceeding these intervals. This proposed AD would also prohibit the installation of the affected bearing stack on a helicopter, unless certain requirements are met. 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 22, 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-2025-5043; 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 European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) material identified in this proposed AD, contact EASA, Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer 3, 50668 Cologne, Germany; phone: +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, 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> Michael Yeshiambel, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (316) 946-4133; email: <E T="03">michael.m.yeshiambel@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-2025-5043; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00780-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 Michael Yeshiambel, 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> EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union, has issued EASA AD 2024-0250, dated December 20, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0250) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition on Airbus Helicopters Model SA 330 J, AS 332 C, AS 332 C1, AS 332 L, and AS 332 L1 helicopters. The MCAI states that there were reports of fatigue cracks found on arms of the TR pitch change spider of an affected helicopter. The MCAI further states that subsequent investigation revealed that the cracks resulted from a load increase originating from degraded bearing stacks. Additionally, the MCAI states to address this unsafe condition, reduced life limits are necessary for the affected parts. This condition, if not corrected, could lead to structural failure of the TR assembly, which could result in reduced or 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-2025-5043. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2024-0250, which introduces reduced life limit intervals for the affected bearing stacks and specifies procedures for replacing the affected bearing stacks before exceeding the reduced life limit intervals. EASA AD 2024-0250 also prohibits installing the affected bearing stack on a helicopter, unless certain requirements are met. 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">Proposed AD Requirements in This NPRM</HD> This proposed AD would require accomplishing the actions specified in EASA AD 2024-0250, described previously, as incorporated by reference, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. <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 EASA AD 2024-0250 by reference in the FAA final rule. This proposed AD would, therefore, require compliance with EASA AD 2024-0250 in its entirety through that incorporation, except for any differences identified as exceptions in the regulatory text of this proposed AD. Using common terms that are the same as the heading of a particular section in EASA AD 2024-0250 does not mean that operators need comply only with that section. For example, where the AD requirement refers to “all required actions and compliance times,” compliance with this AD requirement is not limited to the section titled “Required Action(s) and Compliance Time(s)” in EASA AD 2024-0250. Material required by EASA AD 2024-0250 for compliance will be available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> by searching for and locating Docket No. FAA-2025-5043 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 10 helicopters of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this proposed AD. <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s25,r50,12,12,12"> <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">Replace bearing stack</ENT> <ENT>8 work-hours × $85 per hour = $680</ENT> <ENT>$920</ENT> <ENT>$1,600</ENT> <ENT>$16,000</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA has included all known costs in its cost estimate. According to the manufacturer, however, some of the costs of this proposed AD may be covered under warranty, thereby reducing th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━