iPhone that fell 16,000 feet from Alaska Airlines flight found on the ground in a shocking state

Imagine flying on an airplane thousands of feet above the ground and suddenly the aircraft's door rips off. Sends chills down your spine, doesn't it? That is what happened recently on an Alaska Airlines plane flying 16,000 feet above the ground over Washington state. As reported by CBS, though everyone on the plane landed safely with no injuries, several objects were sucked out of the plane mid-air and were lost on the ground. One of those was an iPhone and the surprising part was the device was working completely fine despite falling from such a great altitude.

On Monday, Sean Bates from Vancouver, Washington found the fallen iPhone on the side of the road while he was going for a walk. "Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282," said Bates on his X post. On identifying that the phone belonged to someone from the plane, Bates notified the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and they confirmed that it was the second phone that went missing during the mid-flight emergency. In the photos Bates tweeted, the phone also seemed to have a piece of a charger still stuck in the port. "Survived a 16,000-foot drop perfectly intact!" wrote Bates.

The Vancouver resident shared a TikTok video about how he stumbled on the iPhone. "NTSB had asked people to go and report anything that looked like it had fallen out of the recent Alaska Airlines accident," said Bates. Thanks to the federal agency's warning, Bates was able to figure out that it might be one of those from the plane. "Thankfully, no one was injured or got sucked out but they did lose some belongings. They were still looking for the door," said Bates. When he found the iPhone on the ground it was "pretty clean with no scratches on it." Since it didn't have a screen lock, Bates opened the phone and called up the NTSB seeing the travel confirmation and baggage claim to the Alaska Airlines flight.

People were flabbergasted by the undamaged phone and were too intrigued to know about its outer case which protected it. "I mean if this isn’t the best advertisement for that case, I don’t know what is," commented @galvincreative. "Things I’ve learned from this: Take screen lock off. Book an aisle seat. Keep the seatbelt on at all times. Secure items during take-offs and landings," wrote @miserymissy. "I need to know what case that is. Because I dropped mine from the bed, a whopping 3’ and the screen broke. Meanwhile, this one fell 16k feet," commented @dizzidoo. 

Also, apart from two phones and the door plug, things like headrests, seat backs and tray tables flew out in the middle of nowhere in the sky. NTSB's Chairperson Jennifer Homendy spoke about the investigation of this mid-air accident at a press briefing and mentioned that a door plug was found in a teacher's backyard in Portland, Oregon from where the flight started. Alaska Airlines released a statement saying, "We continue to await inspection and maintenance instructions from Boeing and approval for the procedures from the FAA. Until then, the Boeing 737-9 MAX fleet will remain grounded." Around 109 flights of Alaska Airlines were canceled on Monday due to the ongoing inspection.