This iPhone Survived a Three-Mile Fall from an Airliner

Last Friday, January 5, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 departed Portland International Airport on its way to Ontario, California. Only minutes after takeoff, a door plug panel that was in place of an emergency exit door blew out of the Boeing 737 Max 9, resulting in the plane returning to the field for an emergency landing.

Fortunately, all 177 passengers and crew survived unharmed — and an iPhone survived, too — even after a 16,000-foot fall out the open door.

That was the altitude the plane reached at the time of the incident that sucked the door plug, the iPhone, and several other items out of the plane.

A Washington resident, Sean Bates, was out for a walk when he came across the iPhone under a bush. It was intact with a piece of charger still stuck inside and about half of its battery life left.

Bates realized the iPhone was from the incident because it was in Airplane Mode and had an email open with the passenger’s baggage receipt for Flight 1282. In a TikTok video, Bates said he was going for a walk and was aware the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had asked residents to report anything found potentially related to the incident.

Admittedly, he was skeptical at first. “It was still pretty clean, no scratches on it…it didn’t have a screen lock on it so I opened it up and there was a travel confirmation…I had to go call the NTSB.” According to an NTSB press briefing, Bates found one of two iPhones recovered from the incident.

This isn’t the first time an iPhone has been recovered from a plane. In 2011, an iPhone 4 was recovered after a 1,000 foot fall. In response, Wired crunched the numbers on the terminal velocity of an iPhone and helped explain why the phone’s survival might not be such a miracle.

Either way, we’re reconsidering our position on using a case. Hopefully, the iPhone’s owner gets their phone back from the NTSB.