iPhone that fell from hole in Alaska 737 MAX flight is found, still open to Mail
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The gist is that it’s a light object and due to that + broad shape, its terminal velocity is not very high. Coupled that with the mass and there’s not a lot of force on landing. Of course the phone itself is fragile so it might not take a lot of force to break. Still, as long as it lands on something soft it might be ok, as we’ve seen!
(1) https://www.wired.com/2011/04/what-is-the-terminal-velocity-...
Angle of fall is another big one. From what I've seen phones are generally fine if they fall face up or down, but even a slight bump on the edges is enough to crack the glass.
If it would have landed on the asphalt, concrete, marble it would have looked very different!
One of my phones made multiple falls onto asphalt and iron grates to no worse than superficial edge band scratches.
One day it flipped onto my desk from a few inches and that cracked the screen.
Or maybe that's cats. Cats reputedly have a higher chance to survive a long drop than a short one because the long one gives them time to catch themselves and maybe slow down.
Only the edges are a bit scratched up.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/LG_Nexus...
I recently dropped mine by tagging by earphone wire and it landed on the top corner with a spectacular bang and cracked the whole screen.
Though it's the second phone I drop with consequences, after Ericsson A1018s.
Other people usually aren't that lucky.
Modern electronics are quite the opposite of fragile, I'd say.
Not all phones are fragile. Ones with bodies made out of glass or aluminium are, ones with "nice to glide your finger along" glass screens can be. But those "features" are found in expensive phones.
Cheap phones, with their plastic bodies, flexible touch screens and removable batteries that tend to leave the case on impact are remarkably robust. As in "riding bike at 30km / hour, phone leaps out of pocket smashes into concrete gutter, covers and battery fly this way and that and so you have to dodge traffic to retrieve them" are perfectly fine after the incident, after reassembly. In fact on of my phones survived multiple rounds of that treatment.
Cheap phones being robust and expensive ones being delicate is a bug bear of mine. The one caveat is cheap phones are never water proof.
Cheap or expensive, I've never see the phones electronics damaged by an impact.
Old plastic phones were indestructible. I still have somewhere nokia 3310. It just refuses to die, unlike many smartphones I had.
Well for my money I think they're mostly nonsense.
I never use them and despite living in my pockets for years, my phone aren't scratched up. Cases are annoying and unwieldy, making it more likely I would drop my phone, and screen protectors make the screen look worse - which I think is what they're supposed to prevent?
I often go 5+ years with the same phone, so it's not like I write them off any faster. My S2 and S5 both lasted for ages, and they both still work perfectly fine - the only issue is that software "outgrew" them.
It would be amusing if it fell into the lake on Nike Campus. It is fairly shallow, but if it was in the middle, it might not be noticed for a long time.
Sounds like the thing in the woods mentioned below was not the real deal and just some other bit of garbage or something that was dumped in the brush.
Previous comment:
I live in this neighborhood and saw a post on Nextdoor a little bit ago that indicates the door/panel may have been found. The text of the post is as follows: “My husband and I were walking the trail behind the Renaissance Town-homes near Barnes and Valeira View and we saw a large white oval object with a teal stripe on it in the brambles between the creek and Barnes Road. Two others saw it too and they called non-emergency. WCSO and the NTSB showed up but they could not affirm that that is what is was. As my husband said, nobody will know until they walk over to it. Unfortunately the undergrowth prevented us from doing so. We'll see, or not.”
The description of it having a teal stripe could match up with the missing panel, although we obviously can’t be sure yet if it is actually the missing part. I also saw a post from one of the folks who found a phone, and they had included a photo of where they found it, which I recognized to be fairly close to the place where the door was potentially found.
Sometimes we hear stuff on our roof, but it’s always just pinecones falling or a squirrel running around… makes me grateful we haven’t had a Donnie Darko scene in our yard or on our roof!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/07/us/alaska-airlines-faa-plug-d...
Honestly did not consider that.
* The iPhone owner didn't put a password/passcode?
* Damn, he paid Alaska $70 for baggage fee?
* Now we know an iPhone will survive falling from the sky
EDIT: I see some people got offended with the bit about Non-Technical users and downvoted me to Hades. I apologize. Not everyone is paranoid like me.
No screen crack is pretty good though. Smartphone screens have gotten crazy good recently
It's very possible the phone has a passcode but was sucked out while someone was using it, and never put to sleep.
Also worth noting the owner had a screen protector, so that may have quashed that everlasting debate.
Looks like that was the price for 2 bags, and it was just increased for tickets purchased this year [1].
[1] https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/baggage/checke...
Based on https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/baggage/checke... it seems like that would be just two checked bags (not two extra bags, two bags!) and is irrelevant of your seat class? Be lucky the poor bloke didn't need a third bag, that's when it gets really expensive.
I guess I just have to chalk this up to yet another case of oddities in American flights I can't relate to.
The entire thing fell out of plane (phone + charging cable plugged), then landed in a tree, where the charging cable got tangled in branches and that's when phone broke out of it and fell in grass.
So phone was able to release kinetic energy in 2 big events (+a few branches hit maybe), not a direct splash on the ground.
Wonder if somehow they can analyze the accelerometer data of the phone and figure out if that correlates with that scenario.
I think dirt/grass is just a lot softer than the things we usually drop our phones over, like concrete or tile.
1: https://www.engadget.com/apple-patent-application-frayed-cab...
Besides, why would the NTSB hold onto the phone for years? It's not part of the aircraft, there's no real reason why they'd need to have it at all. Is it just common with US government agencies?
If I found the phone like that guy did my last thought would be to post pictures of the persons private emails and full name to the internet - and get a bunch of attention for it.
The bit of charging cable ripped at the bottom still tells how harsh the journey was before the landing.
He was working on a movie and cast some paraplegics. One when asked said it was an accident, but didn't want to talk. Fred eventually got the story out of him.
He had been a paratrooper in WW 2. His parachute didn't open. But he landed in a big tree. Shaken, bruised, scratched up, and so on, but basically fine.
Climbing out of the tree he fell, and broke his neck.
It's the landing that does it, not the fall.
That said, falling out of the tree checks out because that _is_ dangerous. Modern US Airborne training teaches a whole lot of caution when doing so. Best case you wait for someone to extricate you, but worst case (or for a combat jump), you deploy the reserve chute and then slide down it like a rope.
I don't know if they were using reserves in WWII (might have depended), but combat jump altitude is typically too low to have time to deploy your reserve. Better to chance the landing, than a hail storm of lead from the ground.
Source: 36 not-so-soft (non-combat) landings.
In WW 2, only US paratroopers had reserve chutes. This was likely a British paratrooper. So no reserve chute.
And yes. Climbing out of a tree while shaking from adrenaline is scary dangerous. But it is the sort of risk that takes experience to appreciate. In WW 2, nobody had experience.
“Air safety investigators attributed Vulović's survival to her being trapped by a food trolley in the DC-9's fuselage as it broke away from the rest of the aircraft and plummeted towards the ground. When the cabin depressurized, the passengers and other flight crew were blown out of the aircraft and fell to their deaths. Investigators believed that the fuselage, with Vulović pinned inside, landed at an angle in a heavily wooded and snow-covered mountainside, which cushioned the impact.[1][a] Vulović's physicians concluded that her history of low blood pressure caused her to pass out quickly after the cabin depressurized and kept her heart from bursting on impact.[7] Vulović said that she was aware of her low blood pressure before applying to become a flight attendant and knew that it would result in her failing her medical examination, but she drank an excessive amount of coffee beforehand and was accepted.[3]”
It seems she’s the opposite of that Hawaii flight that lost the roof and one flight attendant.
The phone's owner experienced a traumatic incident. Which furthermore is under investigation.
Posting some kind of photo feels OK, however, since finding the phone is arguably newsworthy. And the Twitter poster says that it was open to that email, suggesting that they didn't go snooping through the phone. A little privacy redaction/cropping would've helped.
This is an atypical choice, but I always lock when I’m done and don’t encounter any issues from this choice.
I try to avoid modern Boeing aircraft as well.
I also almost never use apps like dedicated banking apps or social media apps; instead, using Safari.
I know folks that don’t lock, and don’t use Face/Touch ID, because convenience (or paranoia).
I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We have our whole lives in these devices, and they could do a lot of damage.
There’s an old movie, called Taking Care of Business[0], where Jim Belushi finds Charles Grodin’s date planner, and takes over his life.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_Care_of_Business_(fil...
Nearly every bank I know of recommends using apps over their website, since in general they're safer than using their websites. But I'm in The Netherlands and I don't know whether banking apps in different countries have the same security standards.
If they have access to the recovery email and your phone then they have the keys to the house anyway.
I found someone’s Apple Watch that had no password. I could have done a ton of nefarious things if I’d been inclined. Had a different person picked it up, they might have had all their accounts hijacked.
That said, from now on I'll probably have auto-lock turned on when flying.
I think you are far far more likely to have a random cardiac arrest or stroke while you are looking at your phone than have it ripped out of your hands in an airplane. The former has happened to several otherwise healthy people I know and the plane thing happened to a few people ever.
Also do you turn it on while you are a passenger in a car or bus?
My phone has the fingerprint sensor. I don't use faceid.
I have a co worker who I won't ride with anymore simply because of that.
Although it may well have been reconfigured, by default iPhones will lock up after a short inactivity.
simpler explanation, it's 2023 apple code...
But sometimes that's not worth the hassle. E.g. I disabled locks while my car was running.
The tradeoff is IMHO well worth it as I immediately take the phone from the car should I leave. So the overall risk is minimal. Yet should it ever distract me then that's a big issue.
And not being reachable was also not an option given family circumstances at that time.
It's just a risk vs. benefit tradeoff. And that's a very personal judgment call.
Most people don't expect a stranger to post photos of their phone's screen on the Internet either.
I set mine to lock and auto-turn off after a short moment.
Nonetheless, I have found that the phone will sometimes get in a state or screen which prevents autolocking. It does this usually at the same state or screen but it's easy to trigger accidentally without noticing.
...just pull down the top bar. That might happen if you're holding your phone and it gets sucked out of your fingers. Or stolen right out of your hand.
Over 40% of Vietnamese share the same surname, and only about a dozen or so are in common usage.
The name reveals very little about the owner.
Me too. But this is a faux pas at worst.
On the third hand, including the name doesn't really add anything to the story/image.
Maj. Eaton : We have top men working on it right now.
Indiana : Who?
Maj. Eaton : Top... men.What kind of of evidence do you think it has on it?
49 CFR § 830.10 appears to be one of the regulations on the subject [1].
Flying is one of the safest modes of transport. And we have FAA and stringent training / maintenance processes to thank.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...
US has the highest death rate per million inhabitants. Even Russia is lower now.
~100 people die every day from car accidents.
If only car accidents were investigated with the rigor of flight accidents.
Now try explaining that to someone with a fear of flying.
People are terrible at assessing risk. Big, scary things like falling out the sky seem like bigger risks because they grab attention, no matter what the stats say.
Hit the cement spinning, which spiderweb cracked one corner. Not content with that, it bounced, now spinning in the opposite direction from the impact, hit on the other corner, spiderweb crack.
Now the bottom third of my phone was shattered glass with shards sticking out. And I had to call my team, learn their eta. One a week-long five hundred mile cycling tour.
Sucked.
Then all you need is to get really lucky and/or hit something relatively soft, like grass on some less-dense ground.
Add in factors of hitting soft ground (grass/brush) and having enough height to rotate into a flat profile instead of hitting a corner.
Now I kinda wanna read about an experiment where someone drops a few hundred phones and compares various models
The most astonishing thing to me is the destroyed charger cable.
Also a good reminder that it's a very good idea to have the screen lock after a set time — even if it's long.
> Imagine going to show someone a recent photo and something you didn't take pops up instead.
this is not true. The camera app opened from the lock screen just shows recent pictures taken with the camera opened from the lock screen. So if you lock the phone, then start the camera from the lock screen, there is no existing photos there.
It's wild to me especially with how important the device itself and email the device has access to can be that someone in 2024 did not have a screen lock enabled.
I don’t know what the full paywalled article says, so they may say the same, but I don’t think that is very surprising.
The terminal velocity of a tumbling iPhone won’t be high (about 70km/hour, according to https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-terminal-velocity-of-a-falli...). It reaches that speed in a few seconds.
If, then, it drops on something that’s a bit forgiving, the deceleration won’t be excessive, and could easily be lower than that of dropping it on a hard concrete floor from a few meters high.
Sure this level of shock would have registered on its accelerometers, right?
How come it did not do the obvious right thing from a security perspective, which is to lock itself?
Anyways is it the obvious thing to lock a phone merely because of a large jolt?
But judging by the downvotes there is something I am missing with this
EDIT: per replies, this was entirely wrong, it was a domestic flight
Neither does my iPhone. Unless cosmetic marks irritate you, they’re plenty durable without a case.
Apple should seriously think about getting into the Aeroplane Manufacturing business; its there for their taking :-)
Clearly that hasn't been a high bar for a long time. :(
I recovered it (by using find my, thanks Apple) and it was intact.
Two days later it fell out of my pocket while sitting in my tourism european car (short) into the concrete of the road and the glass shattered.
So yeah, the elevation doesn't seem to matter as much as the terrain it hits and the angle.
If I had to guess - based on comparisons to energies cited for handgun bullets, less-lethal ammo, and punches - this could be fatal, but (given the relatively large size of the projectile) wouldn't be certain death.
There's also a chance of significantly more drag due to tumbling, which would likely put it into "most likely survivable but very, very painful" territory.
Awed it could resist 5000 meters freefall and still be operative 3 days later.
Confused as it did not lock for such a long time.
Dropping an iPhone out at 16,000ft is probably the same as throwing it off a tall building. I'd imagine a 3 or 4 storey building would be enough to reach terminal velocity.
I'm not gonna quibble about him changing his story, but it's notable.
From the very short snippet I can read (paywall) I dont know if the phone landed in concrete or not.