Bell 429

A mostly aluminium airframe with composite parts where they save weight: control surfaces, fairings, the tail or the rotor blades. The design is held under 1 type certificate (R00003RD, held by Bell Textron Canada Limited). The FAA has issued 38 airworthiness directives (orders that owners must comply with) that name this model, most of them about rotorcraft systems. Operators and repair shops have filed 180 failure reports with the FAA since 2010, 67 of them in the last ten years: about 4.3 a year for every 100 aircraft on the register; the system most often named is rotorcraft systems. 56 approved modifications exist for it, the most by Bell Helicopter Textron INC..

Sources: the FAA's type certificate data sheets, airworthiness directives, supplemental type certificates, special conditions and special airworthiness information bulletins (Dynamic Regulatory System), and the FAA's service difficulty reports. A failure report is what an operator or repair station chose to file; the counts show reporting as much as reliability, and larger and commercial fleets report more. How the systems are grouped.