Iphone that fell from jet found… and it works
AN iphone sucked out of a stricken Alaska Airlines flight survived the 16,000ft fall.
The phone landed intact, unlocked and with hours of battery life remaining by a roadside in Portland, Oregon.
Sean Bates, who said he discovered the device, posted a picture of the phone’s screen, which showed an email from Alaska Airlines about a baggage claim for the flight.
The phone was in airplane mode, Mr Bates said. “It was still pretty clean, no scratches on it, sitting under a bush and it didn’t have a screenlock on it,” he said.
The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed at a briefing on Sunday that a phone had been found at the side of a road and another in a yard. Both devices were handed in, Jennifer Homendy, the organisation’s chairman, told reporters.
“We’ll look through those and then return them” to passengers, she said. “It also helps in telling us, ‘Are we looking in the right area?”’
The missing door plug from the Boeing aeroplane, which had a hole blown in its fuselage mid-flight, was found in a Portland schoolteacher’s garden.
The educator, identified only as Bob, found the panel from the jet in the city’s western Cedar Hills suburb yesterday.
Investigators said the “key” missing component could prove crucial in finding out why the refrigerator-sized hole opened up shortly after the aircraft took off from Portland International Airport.
The depressurisation forced the flight – bound for Ontario, California – back to the Oregon airport to make an emergency landing 35 minutes after taking off. The aircraft had reached an altitude of about 16,000ft (4,877m) when it had to begin its descent.
All 171 passengers and six crew members on board survived, and there were no serious injuries. More than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9 models have been grounded in the US since the incident, in which phones, magazines and the shirt off a child’s back were sucked out into the night air.
Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority has demanded that all planes of the same model are inspected before entering UK airspace after the incident.