CEN17WA193 · Quicksilver GT500
Quicksilver GT500 · Accident: abrupt maneuver during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17WA193
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · 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
- Unknown
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Quicksilver GT500
- Aircraft type
- Quicksilver GT500
- Category
- Ultralight
- 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
- EC-BQ3
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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 Barcelona, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On May 20, 2017, at 1000 local time, a Quicksilver GT-500, EC-BQ3, impacted terrain after making a steep left turn during takeoff from Gurb Aerodrome in Barcelona, Spain. The aircraft was destroyed, and the pilot was fatally injured. The flight was being operated as a local flight.
This investigation is under the jurisdiction and control of the Comisión de Investigación de Accidentes e Incidentes de Aviació Civil (CIAIAC) Spain. Under the provisions of Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation as a State of Design, the United States has designated an accredited representative to participate in the investigation. Any further information may be obtained from:
CIAIAC Spain
C/ Fruela, 6
28011 Madrid
Telephone: +34 91 5978960-63
E-mail: ciaiac@fomento.es
Investigator-in-Charge
Mr. Carlos Perez
Telephone: +34 91 5978906
E-mail: cpperez@fomento.es
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information released by, or obtained from, the CIAIAC Spain.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17WA193
- Event ID
- 20170523X83047
- Case number
- CEN17WA193
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 216c3ead1fb7e9731f27fb9dfc4f2db2bc4637f24e72c5e4d851af163f9b8672; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:02:49.385Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states the Quicksilver GT-500 EC-BQ3 impacted terrain after takeoff from Gurb Aerodrome, Spain, and the aircraft was destroyed.