Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-5390; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-01470-T; Amendment 39-23220; AD 2025-25-12]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes</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 superseding Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2025-13-12, which applied to all Airbus SAS Model A350-941 and -1041 airplanes. AD 2025-13-12 required replacement of any affected elevator flight control remote module (FCRM), prohibited the installation of aileron or spoiler FCRMs in place of elevator or rudder FCRMs, and limited the installation of FCRMs under certain conditions. Since the FAA issued AD 2025-13-12, the manufacturer developed a modification that eliminates the unsafe condition. This AD continues to require the actions of AD 2025-13-12. This AD also requires installation of the flight control and guidance system (FCGS) primary computer (PRIM) P14.1.3 and secondary computer (SEC) S14.1.2 software standards and prohibits installation of earlier software standards. 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. The FAA must receive comments on this AD by February 12, 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-2025-5390; 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 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 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-2025-5390. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Frank Carreras, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3539; email: <E T="03">Frank.Carreras@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-2025-5390; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-01470-T” 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 Frank Carreras, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 2200 South 216th St., Des Moines, WA 98198; phone: 206-231-3539; email: <E T="03">Frank.Carreras@faa.gov.</E> 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 2025-13-12, Amendment 39-23078 (90 FR 30577, July 10, 2025) (AD 2025-13-12), for all Model A350-941 and -1041 airplanes. AD 2025-13-12 was prompted by an MCAI originated by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. EASA issued AD 2025-0129, dated June 5, 2025 (EASA AD 2025-0129), to correct an unsafe condition. EASA AD 2025-0129 states that an occurrence of loss of control of an outboard aileron surface was reported. Subsequent investigations determined that the electronic card of the FCRM of that aileron had been contaminated by hydraulic fluid. In addition, EASA determined that certain servocontrols were exposed to hydraulic contamination before delivery of the airplane to its first operator. Due to the similarity of design, elevator and rudder FCRMs could be subject to the same failure mode. EASA AD 2025-0129 also stated the AD was considered an interim action and that further AD action might follow. AD 2025-13-12 required replacement of any affected elevator FCRM and prohibited the installation of aileron or spoiler FCRMs in place of elevator or rudder FCRMs. AD 2025-13-12 also limited the installation of aileron or spoiler FCRMs in place of elevator or rudder FCRMs. The FAA issued AD 2025-13-12 to address the unsafe condition on all Model A350-941 and -1041 airplanes. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2025-13-12 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2025-13-12, EASA superseded EASA AD 2025-0129 with EASA AD 2025-0197R1, dated September 26, 2025 (EASA AD 2025-0197R1) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition for all Airbus SAS Model A350-941 and -1041 airplanes. After issuance of EASA AD 2025-0129, Airbus developed a modification, which includes installing FCGS PRIM P14.1.3 and SEC S14.1.2 software standards, to eliminate the unsafe condition. The preamble to AD 2025-13-12 explained that the FAA considered that AD an interim action. The FAA has determined that further rulemaking is indeed necessary to mandate the terminating action developed by the airplane manufacturer. 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-2025-5390. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Explanation of Retained Requirements</HD> Although this AD does not explicitly restate the requirements of AD 2025-13-12, this AD retains all of the requirements of AD 2025-13-12. Those requirements are referenced in EASA AD 2025-0197R1, which, in turn, is referenced in paragraph (g) of this AD. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Material Incorporated by Reference Under 1 CFR Part 51</HD> The FAA reviewed EASA AD 2025-0197R1. This material describes procedures for replacing affected FCRMs, which have been exposed to hydraulic fuel contamination, with serviceable FCRMs and repairing any related hydraulic leaks. EASA AD 2025-0197R1 prohibits “swapping” elevator or rudder FCRMs with spoiler or aileron FCRMs and installing an FCRM unless it is a serviceable FCRM. EASA AD 2025-0197R1 also describes procedures for modifying the FCGS by installing PRIM P14.1.3 and SEC S14.1.2 software standards and prohibits installation of earlier FCGS software standards after modification. EASA AD 2025-0197R1 specifies that the modification terminates the replacement of affected FCRMs, the prohibition for swapping elevator or rudder FCRMs with spoiler or aileron FCRMs, and the limitation for installing only a serviceable FCRM. 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 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━