Hooray Airworthiness Directive EASA AD2012-0142 re-issued.
As of 14th September 2012, EASA AD2012-0142 has been revised and re-issued. Now before you go nuts and screaming to your inspector or CAMO this is actually good news and no further action is required if you already have the magic words in your aircraft logbook. One can only assume the representations made to the CAA (and thus EASA) have finally sunk in. The AD has been re-issued as AD2012-0142R1 with the deletion of paragraph 3 and the following additional wording;
‘Since that AD was issued, it has been determined that the pilot-owner of the balloon can accomplish the inspection of the affected parts to identify the leak. In addition, the risk assessment has been reconsidered, which has led to the conclusion that the compliance time for the inspection can be extended to 60 days after the effective date of the original AD issue 17th August 2012. Similarly, as most of the parts have now been inspected it was possible to delete paragraph (3) from the AD, dealing with spare parts.’
This permits the owner/operator to inspect the parts and to check whether or not they are fitted. If they aren’t then the owner/operator is permitted to make the declaration in the back of the logbook in the appropriate places. This is what we reckoned all along.
If your balloon has not got the magic words in the logbook you can now do this for yourself. If it has already been done by an inspector then no further action is necessary.
What to do ONLY IN THE CASE OF THE BALLOON NOT BEING AFFECTED, is to complete the ‘Mandatory Requirements not applicable to this aircraft’ and ‘Mods SBs and ADs’ sections found in the back of the logbook. In the case of some older logbooks you should have pre-prepared sheets glued or stapled in with space for further entries.
Under ‘Mandatory Requirements n/a’ should be an entry AD2012-0142R1, Reason-Affected part not fitted, name and Company-could be the Quality Manager of an AOC or the owner, plus the date.
Under ‘Mods SBs and ADs’ enter in ‘Mandatory column’-AD2012-0142R1, Subject-Lindstrand female connectors, date and hours at compliance – pretty obvious, Method of Compliance-affected part not fitted n/a. The one-time column gets ticked and the Signature/Co/date completed.
If the balloon is affected then obviously the ‘Mandatory Requirements not applicable to this aircraft’ doesn’t get filled in but the Mods SBs and ADs Method of Compliance bit needs ‘Inspected and repaired in accordance with LBL SB12’, or possibly, ‘New connector fitted’ along with the release to service (along with proper EASA wording) in the logbook proper signed off by an inspector from a Part F organisation. If the balloon is in a CAMO then photocopies of all those entries should also go to the CAMO.
Almost all the private balloons inspected by Easy Balloons are not in a CAMO so no need to send anything anywhere.
The revised Ad is at http://ad.easa.europa.eu/ad/2012-0142R1 click on that and you will get the list of applicable aircraft. At the bottom is the link easa_ad_2012_0142_R1.pdf (149 kb) which downloads the AD.