Categories Of Compliance Deadlines Established

The FAA rejected most comments submitted by the community of Piper aircraft owners and vested interests when it issued the final version of its Airworthiness Directive (AD) 2025-02-11. The AD affects a wide range of aircraft, from the J-3 to PA-22 Tri-Pacers and Colts with rudder posts made of 1025 carbon steel and requires those rudders to be replaced or modified.

The FAA estimates that the AD affects a total of about 6,500 aircraft, which are segregated into four categories with different compliance deadlines.

Quite a few comments were submitted opposing the AD last year when it was proposed, including from the EAA and its Vintage Aircraft Association (VAA) division. The VAA put in an extensive amount of time and resources to develop an alternative testing technique along with an alternative strengthening method that was less invasive and did not involve recovering the fabric.

The EAA pushed back against the AD because it is based on a limited number of occurrences including aircraft with unique modifications and that it covers low-horsepower models with no known history of failures.

The only concession the FAA made was to add a fourth category for low-horsepower aircraft like the J-3 and PA-11 that extends the compliance time to 10 years.

The categories are defined as follows:

• Category I: Airplanes with both a rudder post mounted beacon light and a 150 or greater horsepower (hp) engine — Compliance within 2 years after the effective date of this AD.
• Category II: Airplanes with either a rudder post mounted beacon light or a 150 or greater hp engine — within 3 years.
• Category III: All airplanes not in Category I or II that do not have a rudder post mounted beacon light and have an engine between 100 hp and 150 hp — within 5 years.
• Category IV: All airplanes not in Category I, II, or III that do not have a rudder post mounted beacon light and have an engine of 100 hp or below — within 10 years.

FMI:  www.eaa.org/