The FAA has proposed a new airworthiness directive (AD) that would require operators of Dassault Falcon 7X business jets, including those marketed as the Falcon 8X, to add new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations to their maintenance programs. The agency estimates the rule would affect 161 airplanes of US registry, and operators would have 90 days to revise their programs, against the 12 months allowed in Europe.

The notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), published in the Federal Register on November 6, 2026, under Docket No. FAA-2026-13803, would supersede AD 2024-15-04, which took effect on October 15, 2024. It would require compliance, with some exceptions, with European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) AD 2026-0171, dated September 4, 2026, the latest in a series of EASA directives that have revised the same limitations since the current FAA rule was issued. The FAA will accept comments until December 21, 2026.

What the proposal would require

The proposed AD would retain certain requirements of AD 2024-15-04 and require operators to revise their existing maintenance or inspection program to incorporate the limitations specified in EASA AD 2026-0171, which the FAA proposes to incorporate by reference. Those limitations are set out in the Dassault Falcon 7X Maintenance Manual, Airworthiness Limitations, Chapter 5-40 (DGT 107838), Revision 15, dated June 2026. AD 2024-15-04 had mandated Revision 12 of the same chapter, dated June 2023.

According to the NPRM, EASA AD 2026-0171 specifies new or more restrictive airworthiness limitations for airplane structures and safe life limits. The FAA said it is proposing the AD to address “reduced structural integrity and reduced control of the airplane due to the failure of system components.”

The 90 days would run from the effective date of the final FAA rule, where EASA AD 2026-0171 allows 12 months from its own effective date. The initial compliance time for the tasks themselves would be at the applicable limitations and thresholds, or within 90 days after the effective date, whichever occurs later.

The NPRM states that the revisions to operator maintenance documents include new actions, such as inspections, and Critical Design Configuration Control Limitations (CDCCLs), with compliance required by 14 CFR 91.403(c). For airplanes previously modified, altered or repaired in the affected areas, the FAA said operators may not be able to accomplish the actions as written and must then request approval for an alternative method of compliance (AMOC).

Which aircraft are covered

The proposed rule applies to Dassault Aviation Model FALCON 7X airplanes, certificated in any category, with an original airworthiness certificate or original export certificate of airworthiness issued on or before September 1, 2026. A note in the proposal states that Falcon 7X airplanes with modification M1000 are commonly referred to as the Falcon 8X as a marketing designation. EASA AD 2026-0171 also applies to all serial numbers, including aircraft with modification M1000 embodied in production.

Airplanes certificated after September 1, 2026, are left out of the proposal because they must already comply with the airworthiness limitations specified in the approved type design and referenced on the type certificate data sheet. The proposed AD would also continue to allow compliance to terminate certain requirements of an older directive, AD 2014-16-23.

How the European directives moved ahead

The FAA issued AD 2024-15-04 (Amendment 39-22795) on the basis of EASA AD 2024-0033, dated January 31, 2024. Since then, EASA superseded that directive with EASA AD 2025-0122, dated May 28, 2025, then with EASA AD 2025-0229, dated October 20, 2025, and finally with EASA AD 2026-0171.

EASA AD 2026-0171 was issued on September 4, 2026, and took effect on September 18, 2026. In it, EASA says its previous directive required Revision 14 of the limitations chapter and that Dassault has since published Revision 15, which adds new or more restrictive tasks and limitations. The directive states: “Failure to accomplish these instructions could result in an unsafe condition.” It requires operators to replace each component before it exceeds its life limit and to accomplish the applicable maintenance tasks within the published thresholds and intervals.

The FAA said EASA, as the State of Design Authority, notified it of the unsafe condition under the two authorities’ bilateral agreement, and that it is issuing the NPRM after determining that the condition is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design.

What it means for operators and maintenance shops

The FAA estimates that revising the maintenance or inspection program takes an average of 90 work-hours per operator at $85 per work-hour, or $7,650 per operator for the retained actions and the same amount for the new actions. The agency said it uses a per-operator figure because operators incorporate program changes for their whole affected fleet, and it recognized that the number may vary from operator to operator.

The NPRM also marks a change in format. The FAA said it is expanding its process of incorporating foreign directives by reference, previously limited mainly to those built on service bulletins, to directives that change airworthiness limitation documents. The requirements are unchanged: operators must follow the limitations under 14 CFR 91.403(c) and 91.409(e). The new format drops the earlier AMOC wording in favor of a paragraph on alternative actions, intervals and CDCCLs, although operators may still request an AMOC.

Maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) providers on the type that AirPro News has covered include ExecuJet MRO Services, which scheduled Falcon 7X C-checks in Sydney from October 2026, and its Malaysian facility, which earned EASA heavy maintenance approval for the 7X and 8X.

The FAA said it will consider all comments received by the December 21 deadline and may amend the proposal in response. The material required by EASA AD 2026-0171 will be available at regulations.gov under Docket No. FAA-2026-13803 after the final rule is published.

The FAA has put the first digital air traffic control towers in the United States into operation at Bartow Executive Airport (BOW) in Florida and Kenai Municipal Airport (ENA) in Alaska, where controllers now follow airfield traffic on cameras and digital displays instead of through tower windows. Five more non-towered airports will soon receive systems, funded by the Working Families Tax Cut Act.

The FAA announced the deployments in a press release dated November 6, 2026, and said it selected the Frequentis system. The deployments follow the agency’s first System Design Approval (SDA) for a digital tower, which an FAA program guidance letter says was granted to Frequentis USA, with conditions, on September 2, 2026. Under FAA guidance, airport sponsors can select only designs that have completed the SDA process.

How a digital tower works

According to the FAA, digital towers use advanced cameras and digital displays to give controllers a continuous 360-degree view of runways, taxiways and surrounding airspace, along with additional information that supports their work. Controllers still manage the airspace, the agency said, now with newer technology and facilities.

The FAA’s digital towers page adds that the view is shown on a video wall in a control center, that the system captures and reproduces ambient airfield audio in the control room, and that visual tools include automatic target detection, aircraft data tags, infrared cameras and enhanced low-light visibility. The agency describes digital towers as a cost-effective alternative to building traditional towers that may expand air traffic control access at rural and community airports.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said, “Our air traffic controllers continue to do the critical job of keeping aircraft safely separated,” and that the agency is giving them better technology to do it. “Digital towers provide controllers with greater visibility of airport activity,” he said, adding that the goal is to put better tools in the hands of the workforce so it can keep delivering safe, reliable air traffic services.

The next five airports and the money behind them

The FAA named the five non-towered airports that will receive systems next: Winter Haven Regional Airport and Venice Municipal Airport in Florida, Montgomery County Airpark in Maryland, Johnston Regional Airport in North Carolina and Durango-La Plata County Airport in Colorado. AirPro News has followed Johnston Regional’s bid for an FAA-approved digital tower. The release did not give installation dates.

The FAA’s digital towers page says the Working Families Tax Act allocated $50 million to advance digital towers at qualified non-towered airports under the agency’s Brand New Air Traffic Control System (BNATCS) initiative. AirPro News has covered the wider modernization effort, including the FAA’s Modern Skies tracking website.

From pilot program to the first approval

A pilot program dating to 2018

The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 first directed the FAA to create a pilot program testing digital towers as a lower-cost option to conventional towers, and testing on several proposed systems began in 2018, according to the FAA. In 2022, Raytheon and Frequentis installed a prototype digital tower system at Atlantic City International Airport (ACY) in New Jersey for further evaluation. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 then required the agency to set a clear framework and timeline for approving and deploying digital towers.

The FAA said it spent years testing systems at the William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City and other locations to develop standards and confirm the systems meet its safety, accuracy and reliability requirements. Testing covered controller visual capabilities, workstation layout, controller response to equipment failure and the suitability of training materials. Evaluators also measured the delay between an airfield event and its appearance on controller displays to confirm the imagery is timely enough for safe operations.

What the approval covers

The FAA’s digital towers page identifies the approved product as Frequentis’s smartVISION Digital Tower System, for use at sponsor-owned Federal Contract Tower (FCT) airports with a single runway and Class D airspace. The agency says the SDA safety and compliance evaluation typically takes about 24 to 36 months, depending on a product’s maturity and supporting documentation. The same page lists Bartow as the first operational Non-Federal Control Tower (NFCT) digital tower system, in September 2026.

Program Guidance Letter 26-06, dated September 28, 2026, sets out what airports must do to fund a system. Eligibility is limited to airport sponsors that take part in the FCT Program, including its cost-share program, and an existing brick-and-mortar tower is not required. Only systems that complete SDA go on the FAA’s approved list, the approval is system-specific, and the sponsor must own, operate and maintain the system and take on lifecycle maintenance and upgrades. The 2024 Act extended the digital tower pilot program through fiscal year 2028, the letter says.

Bartow and Kenai

In a press release dated March 10, 2026, Frequentis said its digital tower solution was installed in summer 2025 in Bartow’s newly renovated Digital Tower Operations Center (DTOC), and that Bartow had chosen the Frequentis X10 communications platform, which combines voice communications, recording and terminal information including weather data. Frequentis said the airport also aims to establish a Florida Center of Excellence for new aviation technologies.

In Alaska, AirPro Atlas data list Kenai’s runway 02L/20R as an asphalt runway 7,855 feet long. The FAA release gave no further detail on the Kenai installation.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has opened an audit of the Federal Aviation Administration’s safety oversight of helicopter air tour operations, citing questions about how aware the agency is of an “aerial photography” loophole and other exemptions used by sightseeing tours. The OIG announced the audit, project number 27A3002A000, on November 3, 2026, and said the work begins in November 2026.

The audit objective is to evaluate the FAA’s safety oversight of helicopter air tour operations, according to the announcement memo signed by Marshall E. Jackson, Assistant Inspector General for Aviation Audits. The memo cites longstanding concerns about the industry’s safety and about whether the regulatory framework provides adequate safeguards. It says the exemptions in question allow sightseeing tours to operate under less stringent requirements than intended.

What prompted the audit

The memo describes helicopter tourism as a multimillion-dollar U.S. industry and notes that FAA Flight Standards District Offices (FSDOs) nationwide oversee commercial helicopter air tours. It states that at least 58 crashes involving tourist helicopters have occurred since 2008, 11 of them fatal. It also cites the April 10, 2025, accident in which, according to the memo, a Bell 206 LongRanger IV on a sightseeing tour went into the Hudson River and all six people aboard were killed.

The NTSB lists its investigation of that accident, case ERA25MA171, as ongoing, and its investigation page shows no final report or probable cause.

Representatives Robert Menendez, Jerrold Nadler, Ed Case, Dan Goldman, Frank Pallone, Jr., Jill Tokuda and Nydia Velazquez requested the audit on October 16, 2025, the memo says. According to the OIG, the members asked it to assess the FAA’s oversight of helicopter air tourism and the agency’s awareness of existing operations.

A rulebook spread across several parts

The rulemaking committee’s findings

The OIG points to the Commercial Air Tour Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) final report of November 22, 2025, which concluded that operational and procedural requirements for commercial air tours are spread across multiple rules that sometimes overlap or contradict one another. The FAA chartered that committee under a charter dated January 14, 2025, as mandated by the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. Its members included aircraft owners and operators, air tour and safety organizations and other industry experts, and the NTSB and the FAA cooperated with it.

The report says air tour rules sit across Parts 91, 119, 135, 136 and 194 of the federal aviation regulations. Its first recommendation is to overhaul Part 136 so that it includes all air tour standards. Other recommendations include an annual Air Tour Flight Review for pilots not subject to Part 135 or Part 121 checks, minimum pilot-in-command experience standards, flight data monitoring (FDM) programs, the formal identification of High Traffic Tour Areas, and ADS-B In and Out equipage in all airspace.

The committee also recommends amending section 119.1(e)(2) to reference Part 136, amending section 91.147 so that it acts as a referral clause to Part 136, and moving the Part 91 Letter of Authorization (LOA) process into Part 136.

The NTSB’s aerial photography concern

The memo attributes the aerial photography concern to the NTSB, which it says found that some operators use the loophole to follow the safety rules that apply to private recreational pilots. Among its references, the memo cites the NTSB’s accident report on a March 11, 2018, Liberty Helicopters FlyNYON doors-off flight in New York.

The NTSB also raised the issue in an April 13, 2021, letter to the FAA that transmitted its report on revenue passenger-carrying operations under Part 91. In Safety Recommendation A-21-10, the board asked the FAA to identify shortcomings in 14 CFR 119.1(e) that let operators avoid stricter regulation and oversight, citing “nonstop commercial air tour flights operating as aerial photography flights” as one example.

The same letter reiterated two earlier recommendations: A-19-28, that all commercial air tour operators, regardless of operating rule, implement a safety management system (SMS), and A-19-31, that the FAA develop Part 135 standards, or equivalent regulations, for all air tour operations with powered airplanes and rotorcraft. The NTSB classified A-19-31 at the time as open with an unacceptable response. AirPro News has separately covered the FAA’s expanded SMS mandate for operators.

How the audit will work

According to the memo, the OIG will contact the FAA audit liaison to schedule an entrance conference. The audit team will work at FAA Headquarters and at select FSDOs, chosen from a sample of helicopter tour operators. Questions about the audit go to Jackson or to Brian Frist, Program Director.

The memo does not give a date for the audit’s final report. For tour operators and the FSDOs that oversee them, the NTSB’s 2021 letter and the rulemaking committee’s report point to the same provision: both single out 14 CFR 119.1(e), which the NTSB links to air tours flown as aerial photography flights.