Heli Express EA206A helicopter accident
Sky Shuttle AgustaWestland AW139 helicopter · Tail rotor broke due to a manufacturing defect
From Hong Kong Sheung Wan Heli Express heliport to Macau Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG10RA063
- 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
- Occurrence
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 13
- 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
- 13
- 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
AgustaWestland AW139 helicopter
- 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
- B-MHJ
- Operator
- Sky Shuttle
- Onboard fatalities
- 0
- Route
- From Hong Kong Sheung Wan Heli Express heliportTo Macau Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal
- 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
- 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.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Hong Kong, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
Heli Express helicopter 3E206A was a Heli Express Limited / Asia Pacific Airlines Limited helicopter service from the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, to the Macau Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal.
On 3 July 2010, a few minutes after the helicopter took off from the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, the pilot heard a loud bang from the tail and, for safety reasons, decided to make an emergency landing on the sea; the helicopter deployed its underside flotation bags and landed on the sea surface, then slowly rolled onto its side, with its underside and flotation bags facing the sky, and finally sank completely.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Chinese Wikipedia article “空中快線EA206A號直昇機事故” (revision 90885852, 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 July 3, 2010, a Sky-Shuttle Helicopter AugustaWestland AW139 helicopter, operated as East Asia Airlines, registration number B-MHJ, experienced a tail rotor and tailrotor gearbox separation over Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong shortly after departure from the Hong Kong-Sky Shuttle Heliport. The flight crew reported hearing a loud bang and had no pedal authority. The flight crew performed an autorotation into Victoria Harbor. All thirteen occupants on board exited the helicopter after ditching. The helicopter, tail rotor assembly and tailrotor gearbox were recovered with the exception of one of the tail rotor blades. Examination of the tail rotor blade hub revealed that the white blade had separated at the blade root area.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the government of Hong Kong. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
HONG KONG Civil Aviation Department Queensway Government Offices, 46th Floor 66 Queensway Hong Kong China
Tel.: (852) 2-867 4332 E-mail: cadadmin@vol.net Fax: (852) 2-869 0093 AFTN: VHHHYAYX Telex: 61361 CADHK HX
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information obtained for, or released by, the Government of Hong Kong.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Chinese Wikipedia article: 空中快線EA206A號直昇機事故
- Article
- 空中快線EA206A號直昇機事故
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 90885852 · 2025-12-28 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q15908242
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record ENG10RA063
- Event ID
- 20110113X24716
- Case number
- ENG10RA063
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- zh Wikipedia article "空中快線EA206A號直昇機事故" (page 1322801, revision 90885852), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case ENG10RA063 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- NTSB record ENG10RA063: centre of the town the record names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- 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 ENG10RA063
- Operation
- operator is an airline according to Wikidata
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Heli Express EA206A helicopter accident" and NTSB case ENG10RA063, 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.