ANC09WA084 · Kawasaki BK117 B1
Sunrise Airlines Kawasaki BK117 B1 · Accident
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC09WA084
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- API-reported fatalities
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Unknown
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Kawasaki BK117 B1
- Aircraft type
- Kawasaki BK117
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- B-77088
- Operator
- Sunrise Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Unknown
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Not recorded
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Not recorded
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On July 10, 2009, about 0420 Taiwan standard time, a Kawasaki BK-117-B1 helicopter, Taiwanese registration B-77088, collided with ocean water about 1 mile south of the Kinmen Island Airport, Kinmen, Taiwan. The helicopter sustained substantial damage due to impact forces. The flight was conducted under the provisions of the Civil Aviation Regulations of Taiwan. Of the three people on aboard, the pilot sustained serious injuries, and two passengers died at the scene.
The accident investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Taiwan. This report is for informational purposes only, and contains only the information released by, or obtained from the Government of Taiwan. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
Aviation Safety Council of Taiwan Occurrence Safety Division 11th Floor, 200, Sec. 3, Beixin Rd., Xindian City, Taipei County 231, Taiwan, R.O.C. Phone: +886-983-401-983 Fax: +886-2-89127399
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC09WA084
- Event ID
- 20090818X10655
- Case number
- ANC09WA084
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ac2216de13e9aa3c06b91237b5214e618c035eea701781da4f407ce30ba2c37a; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:25:49.616Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative (Government of Taiwan notice) states the BK-117 collided with ocean water and sustained substantial damage due to impact forces; two passengers died.