42 Bombardier jets face a mandatory seat-frame fix

The Federal Aviation Administration is ordering a seat-frame modification on certain Bombardier, Inc. BD-700-1A10, BD-700-1A11 and BD-700-2A12 airplanes. The agency says some seat frames were assembled without Loctite, the thread-locking compound used to keep fasteners from loosening, on non-locking fastener joints.

The rule takes effect July 20, 2026, and the FAA estimates it affects 42 airplanes on the U.S. registry. For operators, that means a required maintenance stop and a bill the agency puts at as much as 34 labor hours and up to $3,024 per airplane before any warranty offset.

Inside the seat frame

This is the kind of problem passengers never see until a regulator turns it into a mandatory repair. The missing compound leaves a weak point inside the seat frame assembly, and the FAA says the directive is meant to address that unsafe condition before it becomes a larger failure in service.

For maintenance crews, the fix is specific rather than broad. The rule does not rewrite the whole airplane, only the non-locking fastener joints in the seat frame assembly that need to be modified to meet the agency’s standard.