Airworthiness Directives; CFM International, S.A. Engines

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-3434; Project Identifier AD-2025-00473-E; Amendment 39-23175; AD 2025-21-03]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; CFM International, S.A. Engines</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), DOT. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain CFM International, S.A. (CFM) Model LEAP-1A23, LEAP-1A24, LEAP-1A24E1, LEAP-1A26, LEAP-1A26CJ, LEAP-1A26E1, LEAP-1A29, LEAP-1A29CJ, LEAP-1A30, LEAP-1A32, LEAP-1A33, LEAP-1A33B2, and LEAP-1A35A engines. This AD was prompted by reports of two in-flight shutdowns and subsequent investigation by the manufacturer that revealed cracks in the high-pressure turbine (HPT) rotor stage 1 blades. This AD requires initial and repetitive borescope inspections (BSIs) of the HPT rotor stage 1 blades. Depending on the results of the BSIs, this AD requires either additional BSIs at reduced intervals or replacement of the HPT rotor stage 1 blades. 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 December 29, 2025. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of December 29, 2025. The FAA must receive comments on this AD by January 26, 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-2025-3434; 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, any comments received, and other information. The street address for Docket Operations is listed above. <E T="03">Material Incorporated by Reference:</E> • For CFM material identified in this AD, contact CFM, GE Aviation Fleet Support, 1 Neumann Way, M/D Room 285, Cincinnati, OH 45215; phone: (877) 432-3272; email: <E T="03">aviation.fleetsupport@ge.com.</E> • You may view this material at the FAA, Airworthiness Products Section, Operational Safety Branch, 1200 District Avenue, Burlington, MA 01803. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mehdi Lamnyi, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th Street, Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: (781) 238-7743; email: <E T="03">mehdi.lamnyi@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 data, views, or arguments about this final rule. Send your comments using a method listed under the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-3434; Project Identifier AD-2025-00473-E” at the beginning of your comments. The most helpful comments reference a specific portion of the final rule, 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 final rule 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 final rule. <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 AD 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 AD, 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 AD. Submissions containing CBI should be sent to Mehdi Lamnyi, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th Street, Des Moines, WA 98198. 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> The FAA was notified of reports of two in-flight shutdowns on airplanes powered by CFM LEAP-1A engines operating extensively in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. A subsequent investigation by the manufacturer revealed that the engine failures were due to cracks in the HPT rotor stage 1 blades. After investigation, the manufacturer determined that engines operating in the MENA region are susceptible to accelerated HPT rotor stage 1 blade deterioration and airfoil distress at earlier cycle times due to the build-up of dust. As result, the FAA issued AD 2022-17-12, Amendment 39-22150 (87 FR 53651, September 1, 2022) (AD 2022-17-12) to address that unsafe condition in the MENA region. Further analysis revealed that these same engines are susceptible to similar accelerated deterioration and airfoil distress when operating in the South Asia region. This condition, if not addressed, could result in failure of the engine, in-flight shutdown, loss of thrust control, and consequent loss of control of the airplane. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. <HD SOURCE="HD1">FAA's Determination</HD> The FAA is issuing this AD because the agency determined the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed CFM Service Bulletin (SB) LEAP-1A-72-00-0485-01A-930A-D, Issue 003-00, dated July 30, 2025, which specifies procedures for performing repetitive BSIs of the HPT rotor stage 1 blades on LEAP-1A engines operating in the South Asia region, and depending on the inspection results, recording and reporting any unserviceable findings, inspecting the sister engine's HPT rotor stage 1 blades, or removing an unserviceable HPT rotor stage 1 blades from service. 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">AD Requirements</HD> This AD requires initial and repetitive BSIs of the HPT rotor stage 1 blades and, depending on the results of the inspections, additional BSIs at reduced intervals or replacement of the HPT rotor stage 1 blades. This AD also requires a BSI of the HPT rotor stage 1 blades installed on the sister engine of the same airplane if certain criteria are met. This AD will require similar inspections, compliance times, and corrective actions as AD 2022-17-12 except for the initial inspection threshold which is specific to operations within the South Asia region. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Interim Action</HD> The FAA considers this AD to be an interim action. The unsafe condition is still under investigation by the manufacturer and, depending on the results of that investigation, the FAA may consider further rulemaking action. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Justification for Immediate Adoption and Determination of the Effective Date</HD> Section 553(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) (5 U.S.C. 551 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) authorizes agencies to dispense with notice and comment procedures for rules when the agency, for “good cause,” finds that those procedures are “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Under this section, an agency, upon finding good cause, may issue a final rule without providing notice and seeking comment prior to issuance. Further, section 553(d) of the APA authorizes agencies to make rules effective in less than thirty days, upon a finding of good cause. The FAA justifies waiving notice and comment prior to adoption of this rule because no domestic operators are affected by this AD. It is unlikely that the FAA will receive any adverse comments or useful information about this AD from any U.S. operator. Accordingly, notice and opportunity for prior public comment are unnecessary, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(b). In addition, for the foregoing reason(s), the FAA finds that good cause exists pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(d) for making this amendment effective in less than 30 days. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Flexibility Act</HD> The requirements of the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) do not apply when an agency finds good cause pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553 to adopt a rule without prior notice and comment. Because FAA has determined that it has good cause to ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━