What is the status in Europe of an FAA Emergency AD, once the Final Rule AD for that Emergency AD has been issued?
Answer
For affected aircraft registered in an EASA Member State, the requirements of an FAA Emergency AD (EAD) adopted by EASA are valid for compliance from the time of EAD issuance, which means that, as soon as the EAD is adopted by EASA, each affected operator (Applicability as stated in the EAD) is expected to comply, within the specified compliance time after that adoption. The EASA Member States’ NAAs (who receive a copy of the EAD directly from the FAA) are expected to notify the operators and thereafter verify compliance (enforcement).
After some time the FAA will also issue a Final Rule AD. It should be noted that the only real difference between EAD and Final Rule AD is the effective date: the EAD becomes effective ‘upon receipt’, whereas the Final Rule AD has a ‘fixed’ calendar date. The technical requirements and the compliance time are identical in both documents. Therefore, EASA removes and replaces the EAD with the Final Rule AD in the EASA Safety Publications Tool.
To clarify the above, for each next case when a Final AD for an existing EAD is issued, the record for the EAD in the EASA SP Tool is updated by inserting the text "This AD is effective Month xx, YYYY to all persons except those persons to whom it was made immediately effective by FAA Emergency AD YYYY-XX-XX, issued on Month XX, YYYY, which was adopted by EASA and contained the requirements of this AD” into the field ‘Remarks’" of the EASA SP Tool AD record. However, the effective date of the AD record in the SP Tool will remain that of the EAD.
In addition, we insert (for reference purposes only) the full URL of the FAA EAD, as it remains in the FAA database, into the field ‘Remarks’ of the EASA SP Tool AD record. Please note that this will be done for future cases only. EASA does not plan to retrospectively update other existing records for FAA ADs that started life as Emergency AD.
Finally, it should be noted that recording of the AD (when complying) is not an issue: the AD number is the same, which means that when an aircraft has complied with the EAD it is also compliant with Final Rule AD. Consequently, once the EAD has been complied with, no (additional) compliance demonstration is necessary for the Final Rule AD when that is issued.