Now that’s what you call airplane mode — an iPhone that plummeted 16,000 feet (5,000 meters) from an Alaska Airlines flight landed without a single crack in the screen and even a battery still half-charged.
The phone was sucked out of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Friday when a fuselage panel blew off, leaving a gaping hole. The passenger plane made an emergency landing shortly after, with all aboard safe.
A few items, reportedly including AirPods and a boy’s shirt, made more dramatic landings after shooting out of the suddenly depressurized cabin.
Amid a search for debris, a man named Sean Bates in the northwestern state of Washington found an iPhone on the side of the road, appearing to belong to one of the passengers.
A photo of the device posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday showed the intact screen and an emailed $70 baggage receipt. The battery is shown charged to 44 percent and the smartphone remains on flight mode.
Aside from the port, where the terminal of the charger protrudes after being ripped from the rest of the cord, the phone appears untouched.
In a follow up TikTok post, Bates said he’d found the phone “pretty clean, no scratches on it, sitting under a bush.”
