Jeju Island coast guard helicopter crash
Jeju Aviation Unit, South Sea Regional Coast Guard AgustaWestland AW139 · Spatial disorientation (flight illusion)
From Jeju International Airport to Jeju International Airport
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's fatalities. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG11WA020
- 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
- Event fatalities
- 5 · all aircraft and ground Narrative disagrees
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- Unknown
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
- Government
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
AgustaWestland AW139
- Aircraft type
- Agustawestland 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
- B516
- Onboard fatalities
- 5
- Route
- From Jeju International AirportTo Jeju International Airport
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Not plotted: the Wikipedia article gives no coordinates, and its site names no town or airport that matches exactly.
From the Wikipedia article
The Jeju Island coast guard helicopter crash was a helicopter crash that occurred on 23 February 2011 in the sea near Hallim-eup, Jeju City, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province. It was a hull-loss accident that occurred only 5 days after the Jeju Coast Guard introduced the AW-139 on 18 February 2011.
Cause of the accident
According to the announcements of the Korea Coast Guard accident investigation committee and the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs, the cause of the accident was the pilot's spatial disorientation (flight illusion).
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Korean Wikipedia article “제주도 해양경찰 헬리콥터 추락 사고” (revision 41753973, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB narrative
On February 23, 2011 at about 8:20 pm (local), a Korean Coast Guard Agusta Westland AW139 crashed into shallow seas about 70 miles west of JeJu International Airport, Republic of Korea with 4 crewmembers and 1 passenger on board. The helicopter took off from Jeju International Airport and picked up an officer needing emergency medical assistance from a patrol ship stationed in waters west of the island. The command center lost contact with the crew shortly after picking up the passenger.
The passenger's body was recovered with the wreckage on March 24, 2011. The search for the 4 crewmembers in ongoing.
The Korea Aviation & Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) is leading the investigation of this accident. For further information, contact:
Mr. Myung Soo Kim, Investigator In Charge Korea Aviation & Railway Accident Investigation Board 281, Gonghang-dong, Gangseo-ku Seoul, Republich of Korea 157-815
Tel: +82-2-6096-1037 Mobile: +82-10-3518-8718 e-mail: pilotmsk@korea.kr
This report is for informational purposes and contains only information obtained for or released by the ARAIB.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Korean Wikipedia article: 제주도 해양경찰 헬리콥터 추락 사고
- Article
- 제주도 해양경찰 헬리콥터 추락 사고
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 41753973 · 2026-05-07 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q19657486
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record ENG11WA020
- Event ID
- 20110317X00351
- Case number
- ENG11WA020
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- ko Wikipedia article "제주도 해양경찰 헬리콥터 추락 사고" (page 1260165, revision 41753973), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case ENG11WA020 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record ENG11WA020
- Map position
- Wikipedia: none
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record ENG11WA020
- Operation
- government agency named in the article title
- Fatalities
- Reviewed (2026-09-19): Aviation Safety Network (news-based); aboard count confirmed by the MOLIT/airportal 2012 aviation yearbook, https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/90478
- Ground fatalities
- Reviewed (2026-09-19): Aviation Safety Network (news-based); aboard count confirmed by the MOLIT/airportal 2012 aviation yearbook, https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/90478
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Jeju Island coast guard helicopter crash" and NTSB case ENG11WA020, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- Death toll settled: the NTSB record (ENG11WA020) gives 0 and the Wikipedia article 2; Aviation Safety Network (news-based); aboard count confirmed by the MOLIT/airportal 2012 aviation yearbook gives 5. Five people were aboard the AW139 (4 coast guard aircrew and 1 patient). Only 2 bodies were recovered and the other 3 were never found. Korean Wikipedia counts only the 2 confirmed deaths, while ASN counts all 5 as dead. The NTSB's 0 is a notification record with no fatality data. The ARAIB report was not reachable to confirm the official count. (Medium confidence, for the reason given.)
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.