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… 🤷♂️
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.
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.”
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?
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
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’m pretty sure Nokia phones would still be best in that falling-16k-feet-from-an-airplane scenario.
