A phone belonging to a passenger on board the Alaska Airlines plane that had a door blow out after take-off was found on the side of a road in Portland, Oregon.
The phone was found by a man named Sean Bates, who said he found the iPhone on a grass verge after it had fallen out of the plane at 16,000ft, and was able to access it as it was unlocked without any security.
Posting to X, formerly Twitter, to recount how he found the device on Monday, Mr Bates wrote: ‘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!’
The flight concerned was operated by Alaska Airlines from Portland to Ontario International in California and had to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff.
Toys, phones and clothes were sucked into the night after the plug door ‘departed the aircraft’ causing instant decompression with 171 passengers aboard Flight 1282 on Friday January 5.
A phone belonging to a passenger on board the Alaska Airlines plane that had a door blow out after take-off was found on the side of a road in Portland, Oregon . The phone was found by a man named Sean Bates, who said he found the iPhone on a grass verge after it had fallen out of the plane at 16,000ft
The flight concerned was operated by Alaska Airlines from Portland to Ontario International in California and had to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff
The fact that the device was able to survive a fall from 16,000ft in the air was made all the more remarkable by the fact that the end of a charging cable was still attached after it was discovered by Sean
Mr Bates replied to his original post by stating: ‘In case you didn’t see it, there was a broken-off charger plug still inside it!’
That the phone still had its charging cable intact despite the wire snapping had a number of people in disbelief.
Sean’s tale of the incident had users respond in awe, as one user replied on X: ‘All I want to know is: What brand the case and screen protector was on that thing?!’
Commenting on the durability of the cable, a second said: ‘Oh that’s crazy maybe that’s why it had a charge at all. I’m surprised it was working at all’.
Another simply marvelled: ‘Wow. That’s incredible!’
A fellow X user wrote: ‘Wow! I can’t believe it survived such a fall!’
After Mr Bates said he was able to access the phone, another user was alarmed at the lack of security on the phone, as they wrote: ‘The craziest thing is not having a passcode! no Face ID?? Insane!’
Seeing the funny side of the phone’s miraculous survival, a third wrote: ‘Of course it survived it was in airplane mode? Like what else is the mode for if not for turning the phone into an airplane when dropped????’
Another quipped: ‘Their Apple Health statistics for this day must be NUTS ‘climbed down 1600 flights of stairs’.
Later posting to TikTok, Sean said: ‘[He] went to go for a walk and found a phone belonging to an Alaska Airlines passenger sitting on the ground.
‘[He] found a phone sitting on the side of the road that had apparently fallen 16,000ft and was of course a little sceptical at first’.
He added: ‘It didn’t have a screen lock on it so [he] opened it up and it was in aeroplane mode with a travel confirmation and baggage claim for Alaska Airlines Flight 1282’.