Here’s a story that you don’t hear often: just after a plane took off from the Portland International Airport, there was a sudden depressurization in the cabin that caused an iPhone to be expelled from the flight. Thankfully, all the passengers and crew members survived as the plane returned to its departure spot safely.
Lucky for Sean Bates, a resident from Vancouver, Washington, he was able to find the missing iPhone, and amazingly, the phone was still intact as there was no noticeable damage to the screen, granted it was protected by a case and it landed on a soft-ground area.
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!
When I called it in, Zoe at @NTSB said it was the SECOND phone to be found. No door yet😅 pic.twitter.com/CObMikpuFd
— Seanathan Bates (@SeanSafyre) January 7, 2024
So how can such a fragile, electronic device survive such a fall? If you read a lot about physics, on a high level, when a light object is falling at a very high speed, the impact force on the object when it lands will be quite minimal. You can read more details on Wired’s piece that explains terminal velocity.
