Airworthiness Directives; ATR-GIE Avions de Transport Régional Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-2262; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00083-T; Amendment 39-23187; AD 2025-23-04]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; ATR—GIE Avions de Transport Régional 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 adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain ATR—GIE Avions de Transport Régional Model ATR42-300, -320, -500, ATR72-201, and -212A airplanes and all ATR—GIE Avions de Transport Régional Model ATR72-102, -202, -211, and -212 airplanes. This AD was prompted by an inspection on the ATR final assembly line that found a fire extinguishing tube, located on the ceiling of the aft cargo compartment, disconnected from its sleeve. This AD requires a functional check of the aft cargo fire extinguishing system and applicable on-condition actions, if necessary. For certain airplanes, this AD also requires an additional functional check and applicable on-condition actions. 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-2025-2262; 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-2025-2262. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Alexis Whitaker, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: 516-228-7309; 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 by adding an AD that would apply to certain ATR—GIE Avions de Transport Régional Model ATR42-300, -320, -500, ATR72-201, and -212A airplanes and all ATR—GIE Avions de Transport Régional Model ATR72-102, -202, -211, and -212 airplanes. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on August 21, 2025 (90 FR 40778). The NPRM was prompted by AD 2025-0080, dated April 11, 2025; corrected April 23, 2025 (EASA AD 2025-0080) (also referred to as the MCAI), issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. The MCAI superseded EASA AD 2025-0024, dated January 22, 2025. The MCAI states that during an inspection on the ATR final assembly line, a fire extinguishing tube, located on the ceiling of the aft cargo compartment, was found disconnected from its sleeve. Further investigations indicated that this condition might affect other ATR airplanes. This condition, if not detected and corrected, could affect the capability of the aft cargo compartment fire extinguishing system to contain a cargo compartment fire. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require a functional check of the aft cargo fire extinguishing system and applicable on-condition actions, if necessary, as specified in EASA AD 2025-0080. The FAA also proposed to require, for certain airplanes, an additional functional check and applicable on-condition actions, as specified in EASA AD 2025-0080. 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-2025-2262. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) and an individual who supported the NPRM without change. <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 2025-0080, which specifies procedures for accomplishing a functional check for discrepancies, such as incorrectly installed distribution piping, of the aft cargo fire extinguishing system, and depending on the results, corrective actions. Corrective actions include correcting and re-installing the distribution piping then repeating the functional check after re-installation, or obtaining and following repair instructions from the manufacturer if a detected discrepancy cannot be corrected. For airplanes on which a functional check and corrective actions have been accomplished using certain material, EASA AD 2025-0080 specifies performing an additional functional check and, depending on the results, corrective actions. 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 103 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD: <GPOTABLE COLS="4" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s50,10C,16C,12C"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs for Required Actions</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost per product</CHED> <CHED H="1"> Cost on U.S. operators </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">1 work-hour × $85 per hour = $85</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>$85</ENT> <ENT>$8,755</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA estimates the following costs to do any necessary on-condition actions that would be required based on the results of any required actions. The FAA has no way of determining the number of aircraft that might need these on-condition actions: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,10,xs72"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs of On-Condition Actions</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Cost per product</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Up to 2 work-hour × $85 per hour = $170</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>Up to $170.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> The FAA has received no definitive data on which to base the cost estimates for airplanes that require contacting ATR for repair instructions in order to comply with on-condition actions specified in this AD. <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 refer ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━