An iPhone that was expelled by the sudden depressurization of the cabin of Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on Friday survived a fall of more than 16,000 feet and was discovered intact and in working condition.
The device – as shared by its discoverer on Twitter – is said to have fallen from the Alaska Airlines flight 1282 after being sucked out of the plane when an unused cabin door broke away a few minutes after take off.
As reported by the BBC, the force of the sudden depressurization pulled headsets from the heads of the cabin crew and even sent smartphones flying out of the hole in the hull of the plane.
Found an iPhone on the side of the road… Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly in tact!
When I called it in, Zoe at @NTSB said it was the SECOND phone to be found. No door yet😅 pic.twitter.com/CObMikpuFd
— Seanathan Bates (@SeanSafyre) January 7, 2024
According to the Tweet, Seanathan Bates discovered the device on the side of the road. The device lacked a passcode or password, so Bates was able to open the device, which was still in Airplane Mode, and it opened to a receipt for Alaska Airlines baggage claim.
While you might expect any object falling from 16,000 feet to be nearly unrecognizable, this iPhone was actually in operable shape. Luckily, as covered years ago by Wired, the terminal velocity reached by a falling iPhone is affected by its weight, as well as the counteractive effects of gravity and wind resistance allow for it to fall out of a plane with not much more damage than you might see when dropping your iPhone from the height of your head.
It also didn’t hurt that the iPhone apparently landed in a grassy area, which helped to cushion the blow. It might have been a completely different story if the iPhone had landed on the nearby paved road.
Still, an iPhone falling 16,000 feet and surviving? Well, there has got to be a commercial in there somewhere.
