Airworthiness Directives; Aerospace & Defense Oxygen Systems SaS (Part of Safran Aerosystems) (Formerly Known as Air Liquide)

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-5400; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-01832-Q; Amendment 39-23228; AD 2025-26-06]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Aerospace & Defense Oxygen Systems SaS (Part of Safran Aerosystems) (Formerly Known as Air Liquide)</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) 2025-25-02, which applied to all aircraft equipped with certain Aerospace & Defense Oxygen Systems SaS portable breathing equipment (PBE). AD 2025-25-02 required incorporating revised procedures for donning the PBE. Since the FAA issued AD 2025-25-02, the agency determined the unsafe condition may be addressed by incorporating the updated procedures into documentation that is not identified in AD 2025-25-02 and that certain requirements in AD 2025-25-02 must be revised. This AD requires incorporating updated procedures for donning the PBE. 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 14, 2026. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of December 24, 2025 (90 FR 56990, December 9, 2025). The FAA must receive comments on this AD by February 13, 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-2025-5400; 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 Safran Aerosystems material identified in this AD, contact Safran Aerosystems, Customer Support & Services, Technical Publication Department, 61 Rue Pierre Curie, CS20001, 78373 Plaisir Cedex, France; phone + 33 (0)1 61 34 23 23; email <E T="03">tech-support.sao@safrangroup.com;</E> website <E T="03">www.safran-aerosystems.com.</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-2025-5400. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Harjot Rana, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: 516-228-7344; email: <E T="03">9-AVS-AIR-BACO-COS@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-2025-5400; Project Identifier MCAI-2025-01832-Q” 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 Harjot Rana, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: 516-228-7344; email: <E T="03">9-AVS-AIR-BACO-COS@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 Airworthiness Directive 2025-25-02, Amendment 39-23210 (90 FR 56990, December 9, 2025) (AD 2025-25-02), for all aircraft equipped with certain Aerospace & Defense Oxygen Systems SaS PBE. AD 2025-25-02 was prompted by an MCAI originated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. EASA issued AD 2025-0222, dated October 13, 2025 (EASA AD 2025-0222) (also referred to as the MCAI), to correct an unsafe condition. The MCAI states that occurrences of incorrect usage of PBE have been reported. This condition, if not corrected, could lead to flight or cabin crewmember incapacitation, possibly affecting crewmember capability to accomplish tasks during an emergency, or resulting in fatal injury to that crewmember. Relevant investigations identified that the PBE operational manual provides instructions that can be misunderstood by a flight or cabin crewmember, possibly leading to errors while donning the PBE. AD 2025-25-02 required incorporating revised procedures for donning PBE, part number (P/N) 15-40F-11 and P/N 15-40F-80, into the existing maintenance or inspection program, as applicable (for transport category airplanes); into maintenance records (for non-transport category aircraft that must comply with 14 CFR 91.417(a)(2) or 135.439(a)(2)); or into the existing approved maintenance or inspection program, as applicable (for other non-transport category airplanes). The revised procedures for the proper donning of PBE P/N 15-40F-11 and P/N 15-40F-80 prevent adverse effects from non-activation of the oxygen system, with additional warnings against inserting hands into the packaging and ensuring only the black neck seal is grabbed to avoid damage. The donning process includes detailed steps on deploying the hood and emphasizes the importance of hearing the oxygen flow noise immediately after donning. AD 2025-25-02 specified that, for non-transport category aircraft, the owner/operator (pilot) holding at least a private pilot certificate may perform the required action for that aircraft provided compliance with the applicable paragraph of the AD is entered into the aircraft maintenance records in accordance with 14 CFR 43.9(a) and 91.417(a)(2)(v). AD 2025-25-02 stated that the pilot may perform this action because it only involves incorporating revised procedures for donning the PBE and that this action could be performed equally well by a pilot or a mechanic. AD 2025-25-02 noted that this is an exception to the FAA's standard maintenance regulations. The FAA issued AD 2025-25-02 to address the unsafe condition on these products. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Actions Since AD 2025-25-02 Was Issued</HD> Since the FAA issued AD 2025-25-02, the FAA determined the unsafe condition may be addressed by incorporating updated procedures into documentation that is not identified in AD 2025-25-02 and that certain requirements in AD 2025-25-02 must be revised. The FAA has revised the requirements in paragraph (g) of this AD and added optional methods of compliance to paragraph (h) of this AD. 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-2025-5400. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments on AD 2025-25-02</HD> The FAA issued AD 2025-25-02 as a final rule; request for comments. The FAA received numerous comments on AD 2025-25-02 asking for clarity on how to comply with the AD or requesting that the FAA revise the requirements. Commenters questioned the requirement to revise the maintenance or inspection program, including the requirement to replace pictograms, and asked whether revising operation manuals (end user instructions) are acceptable methods of compliance. Aeromexico, Air Astana, Allegiant Air, China Airlines, Commuteair, and Netjets stated that the AD requires revising the maintenance or inspection program as specified in 3.C., “Procedure,” of Safran Aerosystems Service Bulletin 1540F-35-001, dated Octo ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━