N89405

On August 15, 1996, about 1410 eastern daylight time, a Cessna 152, N89405, was substantially damaged while landing at the Lantana Airport, Lantana, Florida. The private pilot was not injured. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed, and no flight plan had been filed for the flight. The personal flight was being conducted in accordance with 14 CFR Part 91.

The flight had landed on runway 15. An FAA inspector, at the airport at the time, saw the airplane on the runway with the "nose wheel collapsed." According to his statement, "...although I did not see the aircraft on approach or landing, it appeared the accident had just happened." The inspector stated that he talked to a mechanic at the crash site, who told him he saw the airplane on approach, and according to the mechanic, the approach "looked normal," but he did not pay attention to the landing.

According to the FAA inspector's statement, "...the nose wheel was driven into the lower cowling with enough force to lock the control yoke in the full up position." One of the propeller blades was curled rearward and was embedded in the cowling. The inspector stated, "there appeared to be considerable wrinkling of the external skin on the fuselage and the wings."

The pilot stated, all he could remember was, when he lowered the nose, the airplane touched down nose first on the runway.

The FAA inspector stated; "Although the pilot stated that the landing was not hard, I feel that it required extremely hard ground contact to cause the amount of damage that the aircraft sustained. Inspection of the runway surface showed that an initial heavy nose wheel strike occurred in the center of runways 15 and 21, followed by one prop strike indentation in the runway about 15 feet later, and then skid marks indicating that the nose wheel had collapsed and was sliding sideways." The airplane came to rest on the right side of the runway, about 250 feet from the point of initial impact.