EASA Emergency AD Against Engine Parts

On Saturday, EASA issued an emergency airworthiness directive identifying CFM56 parts that may have been affected by faulty maintenance and thus may be unairworthy.

The emergency AD was issued against dozens of engine models, in the CFM56-2, -3, -5 and -7 families. It is effective as of today, and applies to EASA-registered aircraft.

The AD explains that:

An occurrence has been reported in which evidence of arcing was found on Critical Parts of an engine. Subsequent investigation identified that the root cause was the usage of an induction heater during maintenance in a manner that may have resulted in unintended electrical arcing to those parts.

EASA AD No.: 2024-0067-E (11 March 2024)

The Emergency Airworthiness Directive explains that the list of affected parts described in the document were serviced using the same induction heater and may also be damaged.

The EASA AD requires that the affected parts need to be removed and replaced from engines. The affected parts include CDP seals, HPC stage 3 disks and HPT rear shafts from particular CFM56 engines. The AD prohibits the re-installation of the affected parts, without offering an inspection for airworthiness; thus distributors will want to make sure these affected parts do not enter their systems. If distributors find themselves in possession of these parts, then the parts cannot be subsequently installed on an aircraft engine. For a complete list of the parts and their serial numbers, go to the EASA Emergency AD. Please note that under the emergency AD, there is NO inspection and NO maintenance to resolve the problem. There is only a requirement to remove the parts and prevent them from re-installation.

While the EASA AD only applies to installation in European-registered aircraft, the FAA will probably issue a corollary document to apply the same affect to US-registered aircraft. This is a developing story and ASA will continue to let you know if we learn anything else.