Emirates Airline

The proposed AD would add insp. for scribe lines at external decal locations & related investigative & corrective actions if necessary. The additional insp. was earlier added in Boeing Alert SB 777-53A0054 Rev. 01. Although the ASB gave specific compliance thresholds for the other insp., but it gave none for the added insp. for the external decal locations. Now unlike the compliance threshold of the other insp, the proposed AD intends to require the additional insp. at external decal locations within 24 months from the effective date of the proposed AD. Typically an opeartor would have already planned the additional insp. at the external decal locations within the same compliance time for the other insp. which have earlier been included in Boeing ASB 777-53A0054 orig. issue and mandated by FAA AD 2009-24-08 requiring compliance of the other insp. within the same time as the ASB 777-53A0054 orig. issue suggests but counting from 4 Jan 2010. Now if the proposed AD mandates the additional insp. at the external decal locations to be done within 24 months from the date of the proposed AD effective date, this would require calling the all the affected acft and doing the insp out-of-phase much earlier than these would have been inspected per the AD 2009-24-08 compliance thresholds. For operators it will be difficult to do only the additional insp. (at external decal locations) earlier and do the other insp. later (within the AD 2009-24-08 thresholds). As a result, most operators are likely to combine all inspections together and bring the acft down for inspection earlier than currently planned by the mandate of AD 2009-24-08. Under the above circumstances it is proposed that FAA keeps compliance threshold for the additional inspections for the Decal locations same as the thresholds for the other insp. prescribed by ASB 777-53A0054 orig. issue and mandated by AD 2009-24-08 and retained by ASB 777-53A0054 Rev. 01 and (to be retained by) the proposed AD.