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Senior Taxi Aereo Agusta AW139 accident

19 Aug 2011 · AO, Brazil

Agusta AW139 · Accident: loss of control in flight during an emergency descent

From 9PSD · P-65 Oil Rig to Macaé Benedito Lacerda Airport (SBME)

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Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's registration. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.

Event

NTSB case
ERA11WA472
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
4 · 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
Charter & commuter
WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
Visual Meteorological Cond

Agusta AW139

Aircraft type
Agusta AW139
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
PR-SEK Possible conflict
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From 9PSD · P-65 Oil RigTo Macaé Benedito Lacerda Airport (SBME), Rio de Janerio
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
Non-U.S., Commercial
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
Emergency descent
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
Loss of control in flight
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

  • Aircraft › Aircraft systems

Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.

NTSB narrative

On August 19, 2011, at 1948 coordinated universal time (16:48 local time), an Agusta, AW139, helicopter, Brazilian registration PT-SEK, impacted into the Atlantic Ocean, near an oil rig, identifier P-65, the helicopter sank in waters with a recorded floor depth of 100 meters (328 feet). The 2 person flight crew and 2 passengers have not been located and are presumed killed. The flight had just departed P-65 and was en route to Macae Municipality, Rio de Janerio, Brazil, at the time of the accident.

The investigation is under the direction of the Government of Brazil.

For further information contact:

Aeronautical Accident Prevention and Investigation Center Investigative Division SHIS-QI 05-VI COMAR Brasilia-DF, Brazil 71.615-600 Tel: (55-61) 3364-8812 Email: dipaa.spai@cenipa.aer.mil.br

This report is for informational purposes, and only contains information released by the government of Brazil.

Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ERA11WA472
Event ID
20110826X75418
Case number
ERA11WA472
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: 553713c764ce06a7827f1cda18c2e4990d3ce8d3136938b7b56f43f99158116f; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:46:14.440Z.