Airworthiness Directives; General Electric Company (GE) CF6-80 Series Turbofan Engines

The FAA is superseding an existing airworthiness directive (AD) for GE CF6-80 series turbofan engines with certain stage 1 high- pressure turbine (HPT) rotor disks. That AD currently requires an initial inspection as a qualification for the mandatory rework procedures for certain disks, and repetitive inspections only for certain disks for which the rework procedures were not required. That action also requires reworking certain disks before further flight, and removes certain CF6-80E1 series disks from service. This AD requires the same actions but shortens the compliance schedule for HPT disks that have not been previously inspected using AD 2004-04-07, which this AD supersedes. This AD results from a recent report of an uncontained failure of a stage 1 HPT disk. We are issuing this AD to detect and prevent cracks in the bottoms of the dovetail slots that could propagate to failure of the disk and cause an uncontained engine failure.