Two cell phones were recovered from the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jet that had an inflight explosive episode as it flew across Oregon over the weekend.
The incident occurred on Friday just as the plane was making its way to Ontario, California.
During a news conference on Sunday, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy confirmed that the devices were recovered by residents in the area where the door plug fell from the structure.
“Some community members found a cell phone in a yard and a cell phone on the side of the road and contacted us and handed them in,” she said.
One of the devides, which appears to be an iPhone, still appeared to be completely intact and functional after it dropped from 16,000 feet in the sky. The cell phone still had part of a charger attached to it.
One of those residents appeared to have posted his discovery to X, formerly Twitter, writing, “found an iPhone on the side of the road… Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282.”
They have terminal velocity like everything else. Really, it all depended on what those phones landed on/in.
Yes, thank you. Whether you drop it from 200 feet or 20,000 feet it’s still gonna hit the ground at the exact same speed.
Idk if you forgot the /s or im stupid. I didnt think thats how that worked, but i am reading how a phone survived falling out a plane. So… 🤷♂️
Okay i dont completely understand it, but i think i get the gist of it. But i grew up hearing the what if of throwing marbles and pennies off a skyscraper killing people cause of the falling velocity. I assume thats not correct then?
It doesnt really add up in my mind. How doesnt any object gain more speed as it falls, ive read stories of people dieing by being struck by falling debris. Im less confused on the velocity thing and more confused on how if a phone falling 16000 feet were to hit someone in the head theyd be fine, but if it hit some grass then the item itself would be okay.
Its cool to be downvoted for being ignorant, but id think people would be a bit understanding because it just doesnt seem to make sense to me. And i at least admit that.
Totally respect you for saying you don’t get it. Way better to admit what you don’t know.
In a vacuum, you would be correct that things falling to earth would just keep accelerating until they hit the ground. But we have air which slows things down. Everything that falls in earths atmosphere reaches it’s terminal velocity if it falls from a high enough height.
One way to think of it is to think about how anything falling in air has to push the air below it out of the way to fall. If I just jump out of a plane, I’m going to accelerate to a velocity that will likely kill me. Now if I bring a parachute, I’m bringing more weight, but I’m also able to push against a lot more air and the amount of air I push against will slow me enough that even though I’m still falling, my terminal velocity is low enough that I can survive.
The more air something can push against in comparison to it’s mass, the lower it’s terminal velocity. That being said everything falling in our atmosphere will reach a point where gravity can’t pull it through the air resistance any faster. The force of gravity and air resistance are balanced. That is it’s terminal velocity.
But there is a lot less air high up in the sky, so wouldnt it speed up untill it got closer to the ground where the air resistance kicks in. Or is 16000 feet not as high as i think it is. I know things in space keep accelerating because of the lack of air and burn up. But maybe its just the scale of things that I’m not wrapping my head around. I apologize for asking stupid questions. It just seems crazy a phone can survive that drop.
That is true the atmosphere is less dense at high altitudes. But 16,000 feet is really not that high up. Humans can still breathe without oxygen at that altitude (not well but well enough). Short answer is the phone didn’t fall from a high enough hight to burn up. And as things fall they fall into denser air so the air pushes on them and slows them down.
As a comparison
- See level - 0 feet
- Denver Colorado - 5280ish feet
- Highest town in the USA - 10,000 feet
- Altitude the pug door came out at - 16,000
- Highest permanent human settlement - 16,700
- Mt Everest - 24,000
- Height of commercial jet at cruise - 35,000 to 45,000
- F-22 raptor fighter jet max altitude - 60,000ish
- SR-71 Blackbird cruise altitude - 85,000ish
- Edge of atmosphere - 330,000
- International space station -1,213,000
Hell we are all still learning the only way to ask hard questions to ask all the easy ones first
This article has a chart of oxygen % at varying attitudes, which I thought was interesting.
https://milehightraining.com/altitude-to-oxygen-chart/
There’s roughly half the oxygen there vs sea level, and is the height of the everest base camp, where you don’t need supplied oxygen.
No clue if half oxygen means half everything else in the air though.
To clarify, if it fell from 1 foot vs. if it fell from 10 feet then it will hit the floor at very different speeds. But at some particular height the object has enough time to reach its maximum downward speed. So falling from any height above that will never make the object reach a faster fall speed.
Gravity makes the object fall faster and faster, but the quicker it moves the more air resistance it encounters from trying to squish the air out of its way (this is called drag). After a few seconds the force of gravity that’s trying to pull it down is equal to the force of drag from the air not wanting to move out of the way - and at that point gravity can no longer make it fall any faster than it’s already falling. We call that speed its terminal velocity, meaning the maximum speed that gravity can make an object fall through the air.
It’s exactly how it works. Just look at Vesna Vulovic.
Google “terminal velocity”
Aha, there’s source of the problem. Those phones weren’t set to airplane mode.
“found an iPhone on the side of the road… Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282.”
Stupid reality, ruining my joke.
It had me laughing, but I also thought that you meant the non-recovered or destroyed phones weren’t set to airplane mode.
Can we talk about how the phone did not have a screen lock? What?
Let me complain here about the screen lock settings on iOS.
The iOS settings for the phone’s screen auto-lock has 30-seconds, 1-min, 2-min, 3-min, 4-min, 5-min and never.
There are many scenarios for me where 5 minutes is just too damn short. Ergo, I’ll never use the 1-4-min settings. This is just a dumb set of options IMHO. Why is there not a 10/15/20-min setting?
So, I end up setting it to never auto-lock as this annoys me somewhat less. Still quite annoying, but this would explain why my phone might still be unlocked after being blasted out the new airlock.
Face ID keeps your phone unlocked as long as you’re looking at the screen. Does that not do it for you?
No. I don’t use Face ID nor would it work for the below scenario.
One situation is that I want my phone to show me the traffic congestion whilst I drive so I can alter my route dynamically. The screen locks every five minutes (longest setting available), but my commute is ~40 minutes.
I should just change it each time I am commuting, but I end up leaving it b/c lazy and I do have other instances of desiring longer lock times.
Honestly, how hard would it be to have a custom lock screen time available?
One situation is that I want my phone to show me the traffic congestion whilst I drive so I can alter my route dynamically. The screen locks every five minutes (longest setting available), but my commute is ~40 minutes.
That’s not an iPhone problem but a bug (or missing feature) in the app you’re using. Apps can disable screen lock while they are active with a single line of code. This is commonly used in video players, navigation apps, games, etc.
Hey that’s a great point. I’ll send them a note!
Depending how much you want to play around with it, you may be able to configure something with Shortcuts to get the desired behavior. I have something similar set up for screen brightness and media volume based on what WiFi networks I’m connected to or places I’m at.
Bet you they’re protecting themselves against battery life complaints. Apple Knows Best!
Not a custom lock option, but to make your life marginally easier:
There are no shortcut actions as of Mar’23 to trigger auto-lock. The closest thing I can think of (which I use personally) is this shortcut to quickly open Auto-Lock in settings menu.
So that would save a second… “Hey Siri, I’m commuting // autolock” -> the settings pop open. Source
From up that thread as well:
I always set my auto lock default to never. Then whenever I need the screen to lock automatically I’ll just toggle low power mode from control centre.
Appreciate the suggestions!
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Keeping a recipe up while cooking for 20+ minutes is something I do frequently. Seems the iPhone would kinda annoying to try to use for this. Android has a 30m option and that’s just fine.
A custom or 30 minute would be so nice honestly. That’s one setting that irks me most.
It was likely locked. There’s a thing called Live Activities that displays things like flight details on the screen even when it is locked. Its very handy.
The guy who found it said it didn’t have a screen lock: https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744203705178845510
That’s insane
Is there a niche market of consumers that are worried about dropping their phones out of airplanes, and which phones would be best in that scenario?
I think Caterpillar makes some beefy strong phones
Otter Box makes pretty bullet-proof cases. They’re expensive, but worth it. I dropped a phone 10 stories off of a swing stage once and it was fine due to being in an Otter Box. It did break a window on the way down though, so that probably slowed it.
Blackberry
I’m pretty sure Nokia phones would still be best in that falling-16k-feet-from-an-airplane scenario.
At X altitude the classic nokia becomes a ballistic projectile… Solve for X, marketers
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New high score on that classic iOS game where you had to throw your device in the air and catch it
from what I hear from my classmate’s experiences, the most crucial information here would be the screen.
no mention in the news. cracked screen for sure.
In another article, they cited this tweet with an image of the iPhone.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685
Shockingly, the screen is intact!
If you really want shock, read about Vesna Vulovic.
nice find! thank you!
The only iPhone to be dropped and not get a cracked screen fell out of an airplane!
Screen was cracked before they got on the plane.
Sadly, Apple didn’t buy them a new plane.
Pretty sure Apple bought this headline though!
Naw. It’s just luck that the iPhone survived, it probably landed in grass or dirt. If the other phone had landed in the same spot I’m sure it would be fine too.
Just to be clear, in case anyone thinks that’s an impressive height: it’s the same if a smartphone falls from 50 meters or 5000 meters.
Someone calculated it here: Terminal velocity is about 17.5 m/s or 39.15 mph. The phone reaches that speed in 1.8 seconds after falling 15.6 metres.
So the height is quite irrelevant. The phone landed in soft grass so it’s not surprising that it’s undamaged. And the brand of that phone is irrelevant too. Every phone would survive that.
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-terminal-velocity-of-a-falling-iPhone?top_ans=40231160
I wonder if the charge cable was able to slow ot down or something
A phone generally doesn’t have a crazy terminal velocity. If it landed in a lawn with soil and grass, that’s about as soft a landing as you can get for the situation.
And terminal velocity is a thing
Yes it is… a thing the poster you replied to mentioned.
Yes but have you heard about terminal velocity?
Phones do not fall very fast because they tumble in the air. And this phone landed on grass.
Sucked out by decompression. Landed away from the flight path. Hey, almost in Nike HQ.
Aligns well with my hypothesis: Apple designs their products for Americans, who treat them rough.
