Federal Aviation Administration January 19, 2022 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all The Boeing Company Model 787-8, 787-9, and 787-10 airplanes. This AD was prompted by a determination that radio altimeters cannot be relied upon to perform their intended function if they experience interference from wireless broadband operations in the 3.7-3.98 GHz frequency band (5G C-Band), and a recent determination that, during landings, as a result of this interference, certain airplane systems may not properly transition from AIR to GROUND mode when landing on certain runways, resulting in degraded deceleration performance and longer landing distance than normal due to the effect on thrust reverser deployment, speedbrake deployment, and increased idle thrust. This AD requires revising the limitations and operating procedures sections of the existing airplane flight manual (AFM) to incorporate limitations prohibiting certain landings and the use of certain minimum equipment list (MEL) items, and to incorporate operating procedures for calculating landing distances, when in the presence of 5G C-Band interference as identified by Notices to Air Missions (NOTAMs). The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products.

These special conditions are issued for the Bell Textron Inc. (Bell) Model 525 helicopter. This helicopter will have a novel or unusual design feature associated with a fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system (FCS). The applicable airworthiness regulations do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for this design feature. These special conditions contain the additional safety standards that the Administrator considers necessary to establish a level of safety equivalent to that established by the existing airworthiness standards.