CEN14LA205 · Quicksilver GT400
Quicksilver GT400 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Hillsboro, KS to Alfred Schroeder Field (M66)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA205
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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 GT400
- Aircraft type
- Quicksilver GT400
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Donald Dahl
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hillsboro, KSTo Alfred Schroeder Field (M66), Hillsboro, KS
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After completing the assembly of the unregistered airplane, the pilot made a high-speed taxi on the grass strip and the airplane veered off the runway. He taxied back to attempt a takeoff and, after takeoff, the airplane made a steep right. The airplane continued the flight, and the left wing collided with a tree. The pilot was ejected from the cockpit, and the airplane continued into a pond. The airplane did not contain a seatbelt. Continuity of the flight controls was confirmed, and no anomalies were noted with the engine or systems during postaccident examination. Weather in the area included a gusting wind up to 20 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the unregistered airplane in gusting wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA205
- Event ID
- 20140421X01513
- Case number
- CEN14LA205
- 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: investigation status. 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: b2e7a7ff6bcc4c5ed9c5fdfe87454075bef1e6645a18e0f21461c4587a2e0b46; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:13:21.991Z.