ATL04LA122 · Quicksilver GT-500
Quicksilver GT-500 · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From GA27 · Cumming, GA to Mountain Airpark (0GE5)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA122
- 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
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · 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
- General aviation
- 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
Quicksilver GT-500
- Aircraft type
- Quicksilver GT-500
- Category
- Airplane
- 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
- N5XY
- Operator
- Kenneth Franck
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From GA27 · Cumming, GATo Mountain Airpark (0GE5), Cleveland, GA
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Landing · aborted
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the student pilot, there was a "significant crosswind" at the time of landing. The student pilot stated that he cannot recall any other events prior to or during the accident. The owner of the property where the airplane came to rest stated that on the afternoon of the accident, the winds were gusting from a westerly direction. Witnesses stated that the airplane was landing toward the south, when the airplane bounced on the runway, and the pilot attempted to take-off. As the pilot maneuvered for the climb out, the airplane veered off the left side of the runway, collided with 20-foot tall trees 20 feet from the edge of the runway, where it was lodged in a level attitude approximately 12 feet above the ground. The wreckage site was approximately mid-field (1400 feet down the runway), 20 feet left of the runway surface. A post-accident examination of the airplane was unable to be performed. Witnesses stated that the tail assembly was separated from the fuselage and both wings were crushed aft.. The Quicksilver GT-500 is a sport category, experimental aircraft. It has a reported take-off distance of 220 feet and landing distance of 260 feet.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control and his inadequate compensation for wind during takeoff. A factor was crosswind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA122
- Event ID
- 20040901X01337
- Case number
- ATL04LA122
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. 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: 935278abe922f96bcdeafd965b011355615c8e016c7de0cb5e72312d9b541989; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:17:12.900Z.