iPhone that fell from hole in Alaska 737 MAX flight is found, still open to Mail

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This isn’t surprising - there was a wired story about phones surviving from planes back in 2011 (1)<p>The gist is that it’s a light object and due to that + broad shape, its terminal velocity is not very high. Coupled that with the mass and there’s not a lot of force on landing. Of course the phone itself is fragile so it might not take a lot of force to break. Still, as long as it lands on something soft it might be ok, as we’ve seen!<p>(1) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;04&#x2F;what-is-the-terminal-velocity-of-an-iphone&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;04&#x2F;what-is-the-terminal-velocity-...</a>

It is strange two phones have been found, but not the door. Most of the Cedar Hills&#x2F;Beaverton area is houses and shops with sporadic green spaces that aren’t that large in comparison. It is possible the door fell into a green space, but the odds are it did not. I imagine it is in someone’s backyard, but it is January in rainy Oregon. People aren’t doing yard work right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t found until Spring when someone goes out to their backyard and discovers it.<p>It would be amusing if it fell into the lake on Nike Campus. It is fairly shallow, but if it was in the middle, it might not be noticed for a long time.

A lot of things went into my head:<p>* The iPhone owner didn&#x27;t put a password&#x2F;passcode?<p>* Damn, he paid Alaska $70 for baggage fee?<p>* Now we know an iPhone will survive falling from the sky

My guess is, given state of the charging connector still attached but ripped off (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38914210">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38914210</a>):<p>The entire thing fell out of plane (phone + charging cable plugged), then landed in a tree, where the charging cable got tangled in branches and that&#x27;s when phone broke out of it and fell in grass.<p>So phone was able to release kinetic energy in 2 big events (+a few branches hit maybe), not a direct splash on the ground.<p>Wonder if somehow they can analyze the accelerometer data of the phone and figure out if that correlates with that scenario.

Obscured the credit card # but didn&#x27;t think to grant the passenger some privacy and obscure their full name?

Seems to have landed on soft terrain, which makes a world of difference.<p>The bit of charging cable ripped at the bottom still tells how harsh the journey was before the landing.

In 1972 flight attendant Vesna Vulović survived falling from 33k feet [1] pinned inside the remains of the fuselage after an explosion destroyed her airplane mid-flight killing everyone else.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87</a>

I am glad these phones were not Nokias. Who knows what damage they would have caused.

I would&#x27;ve preferred that the identifying information of the person had been edited out.<p>The phone&#x27;s owner experienced a traumatic incident. Which furthermore is under investigation.<p>Posting some kind of photo feels OK, however, since finding the phone is arguably newsworthy. And the Twitter poster says that it was open to that email, suggesting that they didn&#x27;t go snooping through the phone. A little privacy redaction&#x2F;cropping would&#x27;ve helped.

It seems crazy to me how much attention flying accidents get vs car accidents. No fatalities in this flight.<p>Flying is one of the safest modes of transport. And we have FAA and stringent training &#x2F; maintenance processes to thank.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...</a><p>US has the highest death rate per million inhabitants. Even Russia is lower now.<p>~100 people die every day from car accidents.<p>If only car accidents were investigated with the rigor of flight accidents.

Crazy considering multiple iPhones (latest being an iPhone 11) haven&#x27;t survived a few feet fall for me (no case...I&#x27;m extremely particular about using a case now).

I was in Costa Rica taking an aerial tramway which was about 75 ft up over dirt&#x2F;rocky hill and my Pixel 6a (with just a basic back case) fell out of my pocket, hit the metal floor and fell out the doorway. The very kind tour people actually went and found it and returned it with not even a scratch on it. Not exactly 16,000 ft, but I was still amazed and felt very lucky. The only damage was my wife being right that I should have put a strap on it.

This isn&#x27;t much more than the original twitter post: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;SeanSafyre&#x2F;status&#x2F;1744138937239822685" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;SeanSafyre&#x2F;status&#x2F;1744138937239822685</a><p>The most astonishing thing to me is the destroyed charger cable.<p>Also a good reminder that it&#x27;s a very good idea to have the screen lock after a set time — even if it&#x27;s long.

The charging cable was attached and ripped out with the phone, so it probably functioned as a tail, reducing the velocity a bit. Still, it wouldn’t be much. Impressive survivability by the phone.

FTA: <i>“one revelation seemed to defy the laws of physics: one of the mobile phones that had been sucked out of the Boeing Co. 737 Max 9 jet’s cabin remained in functioning condition after a 16,000-foot tumble.”</i><p>I don’t know what the full paywalled article says, so they may say the same, but I don’t think that is very surprising.<p>The terminal velocity of a tumbling iPhone won’t be high (about 70km&#x2F;hour, according to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Whats-the-terminal-velocity-of-a-falling-iPhone" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Whats-the-terminal-velocity-of-a-falli...</a>). It reaches that speed in a few seconds.<p>If, then, it drops on something that’s a bit forgiving, the deceleration won’t be excessive, and could easily be lower than that of dropping it on a hard concrete floor from a few meters high.

I remember when you couldn&#x27;t drop an iPhone <i>four feet</i> and have it survive. This one fell several thousand and the screen didn&#x27;t even crack!

it was found... unlocked and displaying Mail application.<p>Sure this level of shock would have registered on its accelerometers, right?<p>How come it did not do the obvious right thing from a security perspective, which is to lock itself?

This will be cited by Boeing as proof that the failure of their aircraft wasn&#x27;t that bad.

It says SOS mode, not airplane mode. Wonder why it’s not getting a cell signal. Maybe it is broken internally.

Good PR for Apple, less so for Boeing.

That&#x27;s remind me of Nokia. Maybe Apple has reached it&#x27;s peak.

My first thought was if that hit someone it could kill them, and then i remembered an entire door fell off as well, and all apparently landing in a suburban neighborhood.

Meanwhile, a 1 meter drop onto a wood floor cracked my screen. Device longevity is weird.

It probably survived because it hit soft ground and not like granite or asphalt.

Not to accidentally trigger the 9&#x2F;11 truthers (it&#x27;s been too long for them to be around, yeah?) but this reminds me how several of the hijackers&#x27; passports were discovered near the various crash sites<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PENTTBOM#Passports_recovered" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PENTTBOM#Passports_recovered</a>

Damn! Apple has better QC than Boeing!<p>Apple should seriously think about getting into the Aeroplane Manufacturing business; its there for their taking :-)

my eyebrows may have raised when they left washington years ago, but these recent safety incidents have really caused me to start to doubt the new whartonized boeing&#x27;s commitment to sparkle motion...

Terminal velocity of an iphone should be around 110mph according to this <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn2.vox-cdn.com&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;chorus_asset&#x2F;file&#x2F;6813341&#x2F;Terminal_Velocity_of_Phone__Rev3.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn2.vox-cdn.com&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;chorus_asset&#x2F;file&#x2F;6813341&#x2F;T...</a>

I don’t get it. The original tweet says the phone has been found near the road. Where are all the guesses that the phone fell from an airplane? Could it be someone opening email in the car, and someone else (a kid) to take the phone and throw it out of the window. Then they decide ‘oh, duck we don’t have time to look for it’ and continue their journey without the phone. That’s my first thought after reading the original tweet. But I see lots of ‘feel from the plane’ comments. Is it confirmed the phone fell? Of course I believe it survived the fall, considering I myself shuttered a number of iPhones by simply falling out of my pocket on a concrete floor.

The amount of force created when something hits the ground at terminal velocity depends on its mass, which varies with the cube of its size (with additional effects because it&#x27;s not a cube or sphere). The amount of cross-sectional area over which this force is exerted varies with the square of its size. So when a small object hits the ground, that&#x27;s a lot less force per cross sectional area than when a large object hits the ground. You&#x27;d expect the iPhone to take proportionately less damage than a person even not considering that it also has a smaller terminal velocity.

Interestingly, but last month while climbing (actually doing ferratas, if you don&#x27;t know what it is check it out, very fun and friendly) in a mountain the phone fell of my pocket, easily 35 meters free fall onto the forest below.<p>I recovered it (by using find my, thanks Apple) and it was intact.<p>Two days later it fell out of my pocket while sitting in my tourism european car (short) into the concrete of the road and the glass shattered.<p>So yeah, the elevation doesn&#x27;t seem to matter as much as the terrain it hits and the angle.

Looks like it was in a protective case — can anyone tell what kind?

What if it fell on someone&#x27;s head? Would they have survived?

Not gonna lie, I&#x27;m both awed and confused.<p>Awed it could resist 5000 meters freefall and still be operative 3 days later.<p>Confused as it did not lock for such a long time.

This is why I have a little piece of retroreflective tape on my phone. How to wrap it on the front with the all-glass fronts is up to you.

The terminal velocity of an iPhone is around 25-30mph. Past a certain height, it doesn&#x27;t matter how high up the device is.<p>Dropping an iPhone out at 16,000ft is probably the same as throwing it off a tall building. I&#x27;d imagine a 3 or 4 storey building would be enough to reach terminal velocity.

I think the positioning is even more amazing than the survival. OP&#x27;s feed doesn&#x27;t look like they were intentionally searching for it, so the phone had to land close enough to a road&#x2F;path for someone to be likely to walk past it and see it but not a) onto the road b) into the bush a few feet away.

KPTV interviews with the guy who found it, the woman who found a headrest and the guy who found the door <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=To-viCd1Ow4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=To-viCd1Ow4</a>

This must be some elaborate joke. How did that iPhone stay unlocked? The screen stayed on the entire time? And if the screen stayed on the entire time, how does the battery last that long? (In winter weather no less)

So I think we can now update the old &quot;why don&#x27;t they make the plane out of the stuff they make the black box out of&quot; to &quot;why don&#x27;t they put the plane in an iPhone case?&quot; right?

When did Mr. Bates, the X poster, find the phone? The time shows 2:21 and the picture was taken during daylight. Is that 2:21AM or 2:21PM? If in 12hr mode I&#x27;d expect the later.

this raises the question; what do people do with their iPhones to crack the screen? terminal velocity is not enough speed it seems.

Why don&#x27;t they make planes out of iphones -- or better make them out of Nokia 3210s

Isn&#x27;t this good publicity for Apple? A phone that survives a 16,000 foot fall?

I hope Cuong Tran got his $70 for two bags refunded by Alaska Airlines.

Try dropping it from 2 feet and watch the screen shatter.

maximum speed comes way before 16000 ft... but either way, what surface did it fall on? It says on the side of the road, so Im going to guess grass.

Once it reaches its maximum velocity the altitude doesnt really matter. However I dont know how to calculate that maximum velocity and the minimum required altitute.<p>From the very short snippet I can read (paywall) I dont know if the phone landed in concrete or not.

Boy Apple marketing tactics are getting creative.

Hero protective case!

Apple is really focusing on this tell and tale kind of adversiting recently, I guess.