Department of Transportation May 4, 2009 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This action amends the legal description of the Class E airspace at Refugio, TX. It removes the reference to the Rockport, TX, Class E airspace area to reflect its incorporation into the Corpus Christi, TX, Class E airspace area (74 FR 7560). All other legal descriptions for the Refugio, TX, airspace area remain the same.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, FMCSA announces its plan to submit the Information Collection Request (ICR) described below to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for its review and approval and invites public comment. The collection involves the assessment of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's (FMCSA's) strategic decision to integrate its Information Technology (IT) with its business processes using portal technology to consolidate its systems and databases through the FMCSA COMPASS modernization initiative. The information to be collected will be used to assess the satisfaction of Federal, State, and industry customers with the FMCSA COMPASS Portal. On January 29, 2009, FMCSA published a Federal Register notice (at 74 FR 5207) allowing for a 60-day comment period on the revision of this ICR. No comments were received in response to the notice.

This action proposes special conditions for the Alenia Model C-27J airplane. This airplane has novel or unusual design features when compared to the state of technology described in the airworthiness standards for transport-category airplanes. These design features include electronic flight-control systems. These special conditions pertain to the effects of novel or unusual design features such as effects on the structural performance of the airplane. We have issued additional special conditions for other novel or unusual design features of the C-27J.

We propose to supersede Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2006-07- 15, which applies to Thrush Aircraft, Inc. Model 600 S2D and S2R (S-2R) series airplanes (type certificate previously held by Quality Aerospace, Inc. and Ayres Corporation). AD 2006-07-15 currently requires repetitive inspections of the \1/4\-inch and \5/16\-inch bolt hole areas on the wing front lower spar caps for fatigue cracking; replacement or repair any wing front lower spar cap where fatigue cracks are found; and reporting of any fatigue cracks found to the FAA. AD 2006-07-15 also puts the affected airplanes into groups for compliance time and applicability purposes. Since we issued AD 2006-07- 15, FAA analysis reveals that inspections are not detecting all existing cracks and shows the incidences of undetected cracks will increase as the airplanes age. Consequently, this proposed AD would retain the actions of AD 2006-07-15 and impose a life limit on the wing front lower spar caps that requires replacement of the wing front lower spar caps when the life limit is reached. This proposed AD would also change the requirements and applicability of the groups discussed above and remove the ultrasonic inspection method. We are proposing this AD to prevent wing front lower spar cap failure caused by undetected fatigue cracks. Such failure could result in loss of a wing in flight.