Korean Air Flight KE023
Boeing 747 · Incident
From Incheon International Airport (ICN) to San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG11RA001
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Boeing 747
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- 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
- HL7489
- Operator
- Korean Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Incheon International Airport (ICN), SeoulTo San Francisco International Airport (SFO), San Francisco, CA
- 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
- Part 129: Foreign
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Seoul, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On October 10, 2010, Korean Air Boeing 747-400 registered in Korea as HL7489, experienced an uncontained release of turbine material from the No. 3 engine, a Pratt & Whitney PW4056 engine. About 40 minutes after takeoff, the crew observed engine vibrations and oi pressure indications followed by high exhaust gas temperature. The crew shut down the No. 3 engine and returned to Seoul without further incident. The examination of the engine after landing showed the exhaust sleeve was missing and there was a large hole in the low pressure turbine case that revealed extensive internal damage to the engine. The airplane was operating as Korean Air flight KE023 from Seoul to San Francisco, California. There were no reported injuries to the passengers or crew.
The incident is being investigated by the Korean Aviation & Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB). The NTSB has designated a U.S. Accredited Representative to the ARAIB's investigation in accordance with the provisions of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex 13 as the state of manufacture of the airplane and engine. All inquiries should be directed to: Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs 281, Gonghang-Dong Gangseo-gu, Seoul, 157-815 Republic of Korea Website: http://www.araib.go.kr
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG11RA001
- Event ID
- 20101012X45826
- Case number
- ENG11RA001
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4a55326ae757292145f188a0bf0ae2198df4d3d7b84028025336e89826d223da; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:28:18.027Z.