AD’s

An airworthiness directive (commonly abbreviated as AD) is a notification to

owners and operators of certified aircraft that a known safety deficiency with a
particular model of aircraft, engine, avionics or other system exists and must be
corrected.
If a certified aircraft has outstanding airworthiness directives that have not been
complied with, the aircraft is not considered airworthy. Thus, it is mandatory for an
aircraft operator to comply with an AD.
ADs usually result from service difficulty reporting by operators or from the results of
aircraft accident investigations. They are issued either by the national civil aviation
authority of the country of aircraft manufacture or of aircraft registration. When ADs
are issued by the country of registration they are almost always coordinated with the
civil aviation authority of the country of manufacture to ensure that conflicting ADs
are not issued.
In detail, the purpose of an AD is to notify aircraft owners:

 that the aircraft may have an unsafe condition, or that the aircraft may not be in
conformity with its basis of certification or of other conditions that affect the
aircraft's airworthiness, or
 that there are mandatory actions that must be carried out to ensure continued
safe operation, or
 that, in some urgent cases, the aircraft must not be flown until a corrective action
plan is designed and carried out
 ADs are mandatory in most jurisdictions and often contain dates or aircraft flying
hours by which compliance must be completed.
ADs may be divided into two categories:
Those of an emergency nature requiring immediate compliance prior to further flight,
and

1. Those of a less urgent nature requiring compliance within a specified period

of time.
2. Those of a less urgent nature requiring compliance within a specified period
of time

SB’s
A Service Bulletin is the document used by manufacturers of aircraft, their engines or
their components to communicate details of modifications which can be embodied in
aircraft. In some cases, these may be issued as a Mandatory SB (or MSB) in which
case a corresponding Airworthiness Directive (AD) will be issued by the
appropriate National Aviation Authority.
Having realized that there were distinct levels of seriousness to a SB, manufacturers
started to categorize them as optional, recommended, alert, mandatory,
informational, etc. It was left to the manufacturers to classify a service bulletin as they
considered best for there was no standard for the terminology. Differentiation
between non-mandatory service bulletins is done and decided only by the FAA.

Although a service bulletin may be categorized as mandatory by the manufacturer, it

is crucial to know that compliance with service bulletins isn’t necessarily required
under the FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations) unless the service bulletin includes or
is accompanied by an airworthiness directive.

The bottom line? Compliance with an A.D. is exclusively mandatory; compliance with
a S.B. is not mandatory unless the service bulletin includes or is accompanied by an
airworthiness directive.