The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a new airworthiness directive (AD) concerning Boeing 747 aircraft, specifically addressing a malfunction with the pilots’ seats. This directive supersedes an earlier one and includes additional inspections for previously overlooked part numbers.
The notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that led to this AD was initiated due to reports of uncommanded movements in the captain and first officer’s seats. The directive applies to various models within the Boeing 747 family, including passenger and cargo versions of the 747-200, 747-300, 747-400, and 747-8 series aircraft.
According to the FAA, “An uncommanded fore or aft seat movement during a critical part of a flight, such as takeoff or landing, could cause a flight control obstruction or unintended flight control input, which could result in the loss of the ability to control the airplane.”
Feedback on this directive came from entities such as The Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA), which supported it without change. UPS also commented but provided only editorial corrections. The FAA accepted just one of these corrections.
This directive impacts an estimated 162 Boeing 747s registered in the United States. It retains inspection actions from a previous directive issued in December 2019 and includes both one-time and repetitive checks of the horizontal movement system (HMS) for pilots’ seats.
On-condition actions specified by the FAA may involve adjustments to control lever cables, overhauls of HMS components, inspections of manual control levers for each seat, installation of serviceable seats, clearing foreign object debris (FOD), replacement of horizontal actuators, and operational tests for adjusted control level cables. The effective date for this directive is March 19, 2025.
In recent years, similar directives have been issued by the FAA concerning seat issues on other Boeing aircraft models like the Boeing 767 due to reports of uncommanded movements in pilot seats. Notably, after an incident involving a LATAM Airlines Boeing 787-9 that resulted in more than 50 injuries due to sudden altitude loss while en route from Sydney Airport to Santiago Arturo Merino BenÃtez International Airport via Auckland Airport in August 2024.
Following this event and additional reported incidents by Boeing involving uncommanded seat movements on its aircraft up until June 2024, another AD was issued mandating inspections for missing or cracked rotor switch caps and non-functional switch cover assemblies on Boeing’s Dreamliner series: models 787-8 through -10 inclusive.
