Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 39</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2025-2273; Project Identifier MCAI-2024-00689-R; Amendment 39-23216; AD 2025-25-08]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AA64</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airworthiness Directives; Airbus Helicopters</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 all Airbus Helicopters Model H160-B helicopters. This AD was prompted by a determination that new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations are necessary. This AD requires revising the existing maintenance manual or instructions for continued airworthiness and the existing approved maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, by incorporating new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. 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 February 6, 2026. The Director of the Federal Register approved the incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this AD as of February 6, 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-2025-2273; 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; phone: +49 221 8999 000; email: <E T="03">ADs@easa.europa.eu;</E> website: <E T="03">easa.europa.eu.</E> You may find the EASA material on the EASA website at <E T="03">ad.easa.europa.eu.</E> • You may view this material at the FAA, Office of the Regional Counsel, Southwest Region, 10101 Hillwood Parkway, Room 6N-321, Fort Worth, TX 76177. For information on the availability of this material at the FAA, call (817) 222-5110. It is also available at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-2273. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Yves Petiote, Aviation Safety Engineer, FAA, 1600 Stewart Avenue, Suite 410, Westbury, NY 11590; phone: (202) 975-4867; email: <E T="03">yves.petiote@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 all Airbus Helicopters Model H160-B helicopters. The NPRM was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on September 8, 2025 (90 FR 43162). The NPRM was prompted by EASA AD 2024-0223, dated November 26, 2024 (EASA AD 2024-0223) (also referred to as the MCAI), issued by EASA, which is the Technical Agent for the Member States of the European Union. The MCAI states that the airworthiness limitations for Airbus Helicopters Model H160-B helicopters, which are approved by EASA, are currently defined and published in the Airbus Helicopters H160-B Airworthiness Limitations Section (ALS) document. EASA advises that these instructions have been identified as mandatory for continued airworthiness and that Revision 16 of Airbus Helicopters Model H160-B, dated May 27, 2024, has been issued to introduce new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to require revising the existing maintenance manual or instructions for continued airworthiness and the existing approved maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, by incorporating new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations. The FAA is issuing this AD to prevent failure of certain parts which, if not addressed, could result in loss of control of the helicopter. You may examine the MCAI in the AD docket at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FAA-2025-2273. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Discussion of Final Airworthiness Directive</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Comments</HD> The FAA received comments from one 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 2024-0223, which specifies procedures for replacing components before exceeding their life limits and accomplishing all applicable maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals specified in the ALS. Depending on the results of the maintenance tasks, EASA AD 2024-0223 specifies procedures for accomplishing corrective action(s) or contacting Airbus Helicopters for approved instructions and accomplishing those instructions. Additionally, EASA AD 2024-0223 specifies procedures for revising the Aircraft Maintenance Programme (AMP) by incorporating the limitations, tasks, and associated thresholds and intervals described in the specified ALS, as applicable. Revising the AMP constitutes terminating action for the requirement to record accomplishment of the actions of replacing components before exceeding their life limits and accomplishing maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals specified in the applicable ALS as specified in EASA AD 2024-0223 for demonstration of AD compliance on a continued basis. 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">Differences Between This AD and the MCAI</HD> The MCAI requires, as individual tasks, replacing certain components before exceeding applicable life limits, accomplishing certain maintenance tasks within thresholds and intervals as specified in the ALS, as defined within, and depending on the results, accomplishing corrective action, whereas this AD does not because the applicable ALS, along with the FAA regulatory framework, make it unnecessary or inappropriate to adopt certain paragraphs of the MCAI. The MCAI also requires revising the approved AMP by incorporating the limitations, tasks, and associated thresholds and intervals described in that ALS within 12 months, whereas this AD requires revising the existing maintenance manual or instructions for continued airworthiness and the existing approved maintenance or inspection program, as applicable, by incorporating the limitations, tasks, and associated thresholds and intervals described in that ALS within 30 days, and clarifies that if the initial instance of an incorporated limitation or threshold therein is reached before 30 days after the effective date of the final rule of this AD, you still have up to 30 days after the effective date of the final rule of this AD to accomplish the corresponding task. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Costs of Compliance</HD> The FAA estimates that this AD affects four helicopters of U.S. registry. The FAA estimates the following costs to comply with this AD. <GPOTABLE COLS="5" OPTS="L2,i1" CDEF="s50,r75,10,10,12"> <TTITLE>Estimated Costs</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Action</CHED> <CHED H="1">Labor cost</CHED> <CHED H="1">Parts cost</CHED> Cost on U.S. operators </CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Revise ALS</ENT> <ENT>1 work-hour × $85 per hour = $85</ENT> <ENT>$0</ENT> <ENT>$85</ENT> <ENT>$340</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <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 avi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━