[German]In the USA, an iPhone and another smartphone were found to have survived a free fall from a height of around 4.8 km from an airplane in which a door had broken off in flight. The iPhone was even still working after the fall – Apple marketing will be pleased.
Advertising
If a smartphone drops out of your fingers and hits the ground, at least the display is broken. I remember a case where I was able to catch a smartphone with my foot on the stairs when it slipped out of my fingers. But the fall from a height of about 1.5 meters caused the display to break and the rotation sensor was also broken. This seems to be different with the devices from flight 1282.
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282
The near-disaster of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 has been in the news recently. A (still relatively new) Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft operated by Alaska Airlines took off on Friday, January 5, 2024, from Portland International Airport in the USA for a scheduled domestic flight to Ontario Airport. During the climb, at an altitude of approx. 4,900 m and a ground speed of approx. 700 km/h, the emergency exit hatch and its segment, which had been decommissioned by the manufacturer, detached on the left side of the fuselage between the wing and the tail exit. Parts of the adjacent, unoccupied seat and smaller objects were torn out of the aircraft by the pressure drop and the suction through the resulting hole. Fortunately, the aircraft was able to land safely at the airport of departure.
iPhone found, still works
I came across this article from Arstechnica via the following tweet. Game developer Seanathan Bates found a working iPhone "on the side of the road" on Sunday, January 7, 2024. This smartphone probably belongs to a passenger on flight 1282 and survived the crash at an altitude of almost 4.9 km (16.000 feet).
Bates writes in the following tweet that he found an iPhone on the side of the road. The device was in airplane mode and still had half a battery charge. The iPhone had fallen out of the plane on Alaska Airlines flight ASA1282 and had survived a fall from 16,000 feet completely unscathed.
Advertising
Specifically, Arstechnica states that the device had been unlocked, but the charging cable had been torn off at the plug. The device had displayed information that matched flight 1282. The man did not check which cover was used for the device.
After the discovery, Bates contacted the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which took possession of the device and informed him that the iPhone was the second phone found on the flight. At a press conference on Sunday, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy confirmed that two people had discovered cell phones that had fallen from Flight 1281. The other cell phone was found in one person's backyard (not sure, if that device was broken or still fine).
In the meantime, the broken-out door of the emergency exit on the departure route has probably also been found. Incidentally, this is not the first case of a smartphone surviving a fall from an airplane, as Arstechnica writes with reference to this AppleInsider article. There, a skydiver lost a smartphone. Air resistance slows down the speed of the fall, and if bushes soften the impact, the devices survive.
Advertising
