February 9 , 2015
U.S. Department of Transportation, Docket Operations, M

– 30, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12

– 140 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE. Washington, DC 20590

Docket No. FAA

– 2012

– 113 2 ; Petition to Amend Time

- Limited Partial Grant of Exemption No.10767;

14 CFR 25.901(c) and 25.981(a)(3)

To whom it may concern :

The subject petition for petition for exemption requests an amendment to Time

- Limited Partial Grant of Exemption No. 10767 that would extend it from the current 36 month time limit to the end of 2019

. The existing time

- limited partial grant of exemption requires the fuel quantity indication systems ( FQIS ) on all newly

- produced airplanes be shown to comply with 14 CFR 25.901(c), Amendment 25

- 46, and 25.981(a)(3), Amendment 25

- 102, or later amendments, after expiration of the 36 month exemption granted by the FAA on May 17, 2013. T he petitioner says the extension would exempt all remaining production of Model 767

- 300 and

- 300F airplanes from compliance with 14 CFR 25.901(c) and 25.981(a)(3).

NATCA does not believe the petition meets the requirement s for granting an exemption in 14 CFR

s ection 11.81(e) and is not in the Public interest . Section 11.81(e) requires the petition for exemption include “The reasons why granting the exemption would not adversely affect safety, or how the exemption would provide a level of safety at least equal to that provided by the rule from which you seek the exemption”. NATCA agrees with the FAA's own analysis publi shed the original exemption No. 10767, which states " granting a permanent exemption would not provide a level of safety at least equal to that provided by the rule from which Boeing seeks the exemption (see 14 CFR 11.81) because areas affected by this chan ge would not be compliant, as required by § 21.101

. "
The petitioner’s justification for granting an amendment to the original exemption is based primarily on the cost of developing a compliant design and a statement of no adverse effect on safety because of features required by separate regulations. The costs associated with compliance are not a consideration for meeting the conditions in §11.81(e) for granting an exemption. The statement in the petition for amendment of the exemption of no impact on pub lic safety is not supported by safety standards established by the FAA in rulemaking. Following the TWA 800 accident resulting from a fuel tank 

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explosion, the FAA amended §25.981 to include requirements that address precluding creation of ignition

sources as well as separate requirements to limit fuel tank flammability. All manufactures are required to incorporate flammability reduction systems into production airplanes, including the 767 , by the FAA's 2008 Fuel Tank Flammability Reduction rulemaking . In addition, the FAA determined lack of separation between wiring that enters the fuel tanks and wiring carrying high power could result in ignition sources inside the fuel tanks. As stated by the petitioner full compliance with § 25.901(c), which is in the original certification basis of the 767, and § 25.981(a)(3) at Amendment 25

- 102 or later would result in separation of the power supply in the FQPU, wire separation inside and outside of all 3 fuel tanks. The petitioner’s proposal to only separate wiring f or a portion of the wiring of outside of one fuel tank, the center wing fuel tank
, is a significant reduction in the safety level provided by full separation for the wiring of all fuel tanks.

NATCA does not believe that granting the amendment to allow on ly partial wire separation for one of the three fuel tanks (the center wing fuel tank) is an overall safety improvement relative to a compliant design that would be required to have wire separation for all fuel tanks together with separation of circuits in the FQIS processor . The petition states incorporating a fully compliant design into 767 production would take longer than the center tank wire separation they are now proposing. They state earlier production incorporation of only center tank wire separation provides improved safety. However the dates provided in the petition indicate the date for implementing the production incorporation of center tank wire separation is only several months earlier than the required date f or full compliance in the original exemption. At current published production rates this amounts to 1 or 2 airplanes with center tank wire separation before all production airplanes are required by the time

- limited partial grant of exemption to be complia nt . This does not provide any safety benefit over requiring a fully compliant design in the 37 additional airplanes the petitioner has stated will be produced through the end of 2019. This argument should not be a consideration in the FAA analysis of the e xemption request.

The original petition also states that it would take 3 years to develop a complaint design. Based on that information the FAA granted the original exemption allowing continued production of 767 airplanes with a design that is non

- compli ant with §25.981, and more importantly has been identified by the FAA as unsafe, for 3 years. We note that 14 CFR part 21 allows only 5 years after submittal of an application to the FAA to develop a completely new transport airplane design. Therefore, 3 years seems more than adequate time to develop and implement a compliant FQIS design.
The petitioner has continued to produce airplanes with a known unsafe condition under the time

- limited partial grant of exemption since 2013. As a condition of that or iginal exemption the petitioner was required to provide a complaint design within 3 years. In addition
, the FAA a nalysis in the original exemption stated the petitioner agreed to provide service instructions in a timely manner for in

- service airplanes, in cluding those that would be produced during the 3 years of the original grant, needed to address unsafe conditions. As stated in the docket file, the 767 FQIS was found to be unsafe and the FAA requested service instructions by letter in 2009 and 2011. T he petitioner 's additional information letter ( FAA

- 2012

- 1132

- 0009 ) shows the petitioner has not provided the service instructions as required as a condition of holding an Organization Delegation Authority defined in §§ 183.69(d), and the requirements of be ing a type certificate holder to provide service instructions to address unsafe conditions in §21.99. The petitioner is now requesting an extension until 2019. If granted, this will result in a total of 6 years of production of non

- compliant FQIS that lac ks separation between high power sources and wiring that3

enters all 3 fuel tanks. NATCA requests the FAA include documentation in the docket of any enforcement action the FAA is taking against the petitioner for non

- compliance for 5 years in providing

serv ice instructions to address unsafe conditions as required by §§ 183.69 and 21.99.

Ex Parte Concern The petition requesting amendment to the exemption indicates agreements have been made between the FAA and the petitioner regarding how the SFAR 88 FQIS unsafe conditions will be addressed on the 767. Review of the docket file for this exemption shows no record of communication between the petitioner and the FAA regarding such agreement

. Separate rulemaking to address the FQIS unsafe condition for the Mo del 757 was proposed by the FAA in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for an Airworthiness Directive (AD) in the Federal Register on March 1, 2012 (77 FR 12506, Docket FAA

– 2012

– 0187 ). That NPRM stated the FAA plan ed similar actions for those Boeing an d Airbus airplanes with similar FQIS vulnerabilities that are not affected by the FTFR rule . NATCA provided comments to the NPRM docket and as of today there has not been any disposition of comments included in the docket or a final rule AD published. The refore, the agreement referred to by the petitioner for amendment to the subject exemption appears to be an ex parte agreement between the FAA and the petitioner. The petitioner stated the agreement was to not provid e wire separation for main tanks and on ly provide partial wire separation for the center tanks of 767 in cargo operation that do not have flammability reduction means , and no wire separation for the center tank or main tanks on airplanes with flammability reduction means

. NATCA requests the F AA include documentation of all ex parte communications on the subject of the NPRM for the 757 FQIS AD and all pending ADs for other models and all agreement s made with all design approval holders be added in the docket file for the NPRM

.

Thank you for your attention to this safety concern.

Steven Hansen Chairman, National Safety Committee National Air Traffic Controllers Association Cell: 505

- 715

- 3979 Fax: 888

- 718

- 9694