CEN10CA200 · Quicksilver SPORT 2S
Quicksilver SPORT 2S · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Thompson Field (1TA7) to Canton, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA200
- 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 SPORT 2S
- Aircraft type
- Quicksilver SPORT 2
- 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
- N439MM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Thompson Field (1TA7), Canton, TXTo Canton, TX
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in a turn at low altitude, the pilot of the open cockpit experimental airplane heard a “loud pop,” followed by a change in the feel of the flight controls. The pilot elected to reduce the engine power to idle and activate the ballistic recovery system (BRS). Seconds later the airplane impacted into an area of trees and came to rest in the trees near the ground. The pilot was able to exit the airplane unassisted. An examination of the wreckage revealed that the left wing rear strut threaded eyebolt had pulled free from the threaded barrel of the wing strut. The thread-to-barrel engagement was measured at 5/32 of an inch with approximately 16 threads exposed. Per the manufacturer’s assembly manual, the eyebolt was to have a minimum of 5/8 of an inch thread-to-barrel engagement with approximately three-and-a-half threads exposed.
Probable cause
The airplane builder’s improper installation of the left rear wing strut eyebolt.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA200
- Event ID
- 20100412X71830
- Case number
- CEN10CA200
- 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.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-04-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8dfb906a875b5bcbf95f47f63208af268930ec3265422a5562e61299fc6f647b; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:51:17.869Z.