Airworthiness Directives; Diamond Aircraft Industries Inc. Airplanes

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-5397; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00972-A]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Diamond Aircraft Industries Inc. Airplanes</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 supersede Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2020-14-06, which applies to all Diamond Aircraft Industries Inc. (DAI) Model DA 40, DA 40 F, and DA 40 NG airplanes. AD 2020-14-06 requires replacing affected parts, inspecting the fuel tank chambers, and removing rubber material that has detached from the fuel tank connection hoses. AD 2020-14-06 also prohibits installing an affected part on any airplane. Since the FAA issued AD 2020-14-06, additional affected parts installed during production on Model DA 40 NG airplanes have been reported. As a result, the manufacturer has published updated service material for the Model DA 40 NG. This proposed AD would require the same actions as AD 2020-14-06 and would require updated service material to be used for the Model DA 40 NG airplanes. The FAA is proposing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The FAA must receive comments on this NPRM by February 6, 2026. </DATES> <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-2025-5397; 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 Diamond Aircraft Industries material identified in this proposed AD, contact DAI, 1560 Crumlin Sideroad, London, Ontario, Canada, N5V 1S2; phone: (519) 457-4041, fax: (519) 457-4045; email: <E T="03">support-canada@diamondaircraft.com.</E> • You may view this material at the FAA, Airworthiness Products Section, Operational Safety Branch, 901 Locust, Kansas City, MO 64106. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Joseph Catanzaro, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (516) 228-7366; email: <E T="03">joseph.catanzaro@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 <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . Include “Docket No. FAA-2025-5397; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-00972-A” 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 the 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 Joseph Catanzaro, 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> The FAA issued AD 2020-14-06, Amendment 39-21160 (85 FR 42687, July 15, 2020) (AD 2020-14-06), for DAI Model DA 40, DA 40 F, and DA 40 NG airplanes (including Model DA 40 NG airplanes that have been converted from the Model DA 40 D), all serial numbers, certificated in any category. AD 2020-14-06 was prompted by AD CF-2019-39, dated October 31, 2019 (Transport Canada AD CF-2019-39) issued by Transport Canada, which is the aviation authority for Canada. Transport Canada issued Transport Canada AD CF-2019-39 to correct an unsafe condition identified as fuel tank connection hose deterioration. AD 2020-14-06 requires replacing affected parts, inspecting the fuel tank chambers, and removing rubber material that has detached from the fuel tank connection hoses. AD 2020-14-06 also prohibits installing an affected part on any airplane. The FAA issued AD 2020-14-06 to detect deterioration of fuel tank connection hoses, which, if not corrected, could result in contamination of the fuel system and restriction of fuel flow, and could lead to fuel starvation and reduced control of the airplane. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2020-14-06 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2020-14-06, Transport Canada superseded Transport Canada AD CF-2019-39 and issued Transport Canada AD CF-2019-39R1, dated May 21, 2025 (also referred to as the MCAI). The MCAI states that since the issuance of Transport Canada AD CF-2019-39, Transport Canada has received reports of affected parts installed during production on DAI Model DA 40 NG airplanes. As a result, the manufacturer published updated service material for the Model DA 40 NG. The MCAI also continues to require replacing affected fuel tank connection hoses, inspecting the fuel tank chambers, and removing rubber material that has detached from the fuel tank connection hoses. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-5397. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed Diamond Aircraft Industries Mandatory Service Bulletin No. MSB 40NG-064 Rev. 3, dated January 23, 2025, which specifies procedures for replacing affected parts, inspecting the fuel tank chambers, and removing rubber material that has detached from the hoses. This material also specifies the service centers from which the affected parts could have been obtained, and the serial numbers for additional DAI Model DA 40 NG airplanes that are affected by the unsafe condition and were not in the previous version of the material. This proposed AD would also require the following Diamond Aircraft Industries Mandatory Service Bulletins, which the Director of the Federal Register approved for incorporation by reference as of August 4, 2020 (85 FR 42687, July 15, 2020): • Diamond Aircraft Industries Mandatory Service Bulletin No. MSB 40-087, Revision 3, dated November 5, 2019. • Diamond Aircraft Industries Mandatory Service Bulletin No. MSB F4-037, Revision 3, dated November 5, 2019. • Diamond Aircraft Industries Work Instruction WI-MSB 40-087, Revision 0, dated July 1, 2019. • Diamond Aircraft Industries Work Instruction WI-MSB F4-037, Revision 0, dated July 1, 2019. • Diamond Aircraft Industries Work Instruction WI-MSB 40 NG-064, Revision 0, dated July 1, 2019. 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 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 and material 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 the same actions as AD 2020-14-06 and would require updated material to be used for the Model DA 40 NG airplanes. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD, if adopted as proposed, would affect 987 airplanes of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the followi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━