Airworthiness Directives; Hélicoptères Guimbal Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-1102; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00183-R; Amendment 39-23205; AD 2025-24-08]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Hélicoptères Guimbal Helicopters</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 adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all Hélicoptères Guimbal (Guimbal) Model Cabri G2 helicopters. This AD was prompted by reports of cracked main rotor swashplates (swashplates). This AD requires repetitively inspecting certain swashplates for cracks and, depending on the results, removing and replacing each cracked swashplate. This AD also prohibits installing an affected swashplate unless it has passed the inspection requirements. 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 13, 2026. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of January 13, 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-2025-1102; 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 Guimbal material identified in this AD, contact Guimbal, 1070, rue du Lieutenant Parayre, Aérodrome d'Aix-en-Provence, 13290 Les Milles, France; phone: 33-04-42-39-10-88; email: <E T="03">support@guimbal.com;</E> or at <E T="03">guimbal.com.</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. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-1102. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> George Weir, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (817) 222-4045; email: <E T="03">george.a.weir@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 by adding an AD that would apply to all Guimbal Model Cabri G2 helicopters. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on June 18, 2025 (90 FR 25906). The NPRM was prompted by AD 2024-0071, dated March 14, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0071) (also referred to as the MCAI), issued by European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. The MCAI states that occurrences were reported where, during maintenance, cracks were found on the rotating and non-rotating part of the swashplates of two Guimbal Model Cabri G2 helicopters. Guimbal concluded that the cracks were likely caused by aging and corrosion. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require removing the paint on each swashplate and repetitively visually inspecting the six arms of the rotating and non-rotating swashplates for cracks and, depending on the results, removing and replacing any cracked swashplate or repainting the swashplate. The NPRM also prohibited installing an affected swashplate unless it has passed the proposed inspection requirements. The FAA is issuing this AD to detect and correct a cracked swashplate. The unsafe condition, if not addressed, could lead to failure of a cracked swashplate, which could result in 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-2025-1102. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from 12 commenters. The commenters were Austin Peay State University Aviation Science, Cabri US, Rotor Leasing LLC, Carlson Aeromotive, EASA, Hélicoptères Guimbal, Precision Support Services, and five individual commenters. The majority of the commenters expressed concerns regarding the necessity of paint removal for the initial inspection and stated that the cost estimates for the inspection and corrective actions appear to be undervalued. Additional concerns were raised about the frequency of inspections, the availability of materials, and the potential use of a magnifying glass during the process. Furthermore, there is a desire for the FAA AD to align with the information outlined in the EASA AD. Several commenters also voiced support for the opinions of their peers. The following presents the comments received on the NPRM and the FAA's response to each comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Remove Paint Removal Requirement for the Initial and Repetitive Inspections</HD> Eleven commenters requested a revision of the required actions to remove the required action of removing the paint as part of the initial and repetitive inspections. Five of the commenters stated that the stripping and repainting is only required in cases of doubt in the required service material and not at each inspection. Several commenters stated there is a significant risk of damaging or weakening the integrity of the swashplate due to repeated paint stripping and this paint stripping will not enhance the detection of potential cracks. Guimbal stated that removing the paint at each inspection could create new corrosion areas as well as painting errors. Austin Peay State University Aviation Science stated that the proposed AD will bypass the initial visual inspection and cause maintenance personnel to initiate invasive maintenance procedures, such as sanding paint and metal and using abrasives, which will introduce flaws and could develop into stress fractures and shorten the life of the component. Additionally, Rotor Leasing LLC stated that, if the FAA has concerns regarding an undetected crack, it would be prudent to mandate a dye penetrant inspection rather than relying solely on a visual inspection. Furthermore, several commenters stated the urethane paint will crack along with the aluminum if a crack appears and thus ensure that any cracks won't be concealed by the existing paint. The FAA partially agrees. The FAA agrees that removing the paint in order to accomplish the initial and repetitive visual inspections is unnecessary and revised this AD by eliminating those requirements. The FAA disagrees with requiring a dye penetrant inspection instead of a visual inspection in order to accomplish the inspection of the rotating and non-rotating swashplates for a crack. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Revise the Inspection Interval</HD> Three of the commenters requested that the inspection intervals proposed in the NPRM of not exceeding 60 hours time in service (TIS) be revised to align with the 50-hour TIS, 100-hour TIS, and annual inspections as specified in the service material. The commenters stated these standard inspections already necessitate a visual inspection of the swashplate, and requiring an additional visual inspection is not cost-effective. The FAA disagrees with revising the proposed inspection intervals from 60 hours TIS or 14 months, whichever occurs first. This final rule follows the inspection intervals specified in the MCAI and the service material. In addition, repetitive inspections may always be conducted before exceeding the 60 hours TIS to align with maintenance intervals. The FAA has not changed this AD in this regard. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Revise the Cost of Compliance Paragraph</HD> Several commenters stated the process of removing the paint, inspecting, and reapplying the paint will take a minimum of 2 hours and possibly up to 4 hours not 30 minutes as indicated in the NPRM. The commenters requested revising this estimate to increase to two hours. The commenters also suggested revising the labor rate of $85 per hour to a range between $125 and $185 per hour to reflect current rates. The FAA partially agrees. After considering the data presented by commenters, the FAA agrees that the number of work-hours required to remove the paint, inspect and reapply the paint is higher than the agency's previous estimate. The Costs of Compliance paragraph has been revised to indicate this as an on-condition cost and has increased the estimated work-hours associated with this required action to 2 work-hours. The FAA disagrees with changing the labor rate of $85 per hour. The FAA notes that the current wage rate for aviation mechanics as provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, found at <E T="03">data.bls.gov/oesprofile,</E> after accounting for fringe benefits that are valued at roughly 50 percent of the nominal wage, is lower than the estimated fully burdened labor rate of $85 per hour. Therefore, the FAA is unable to justify increasing the labor rate from $85 per hour. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request To Revise the Materials Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51 Paragraph</HD> Austin Peay State University Aviation Science stated in the section titled Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR part 51, the statement that material is reasonably available is incorrect. The commenter states the approved paint is only available in Europe and is not readily available due to the long shipping process. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━