The recent, dangerous venture of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 could not be captured by passenger Cuong Tran, as his phone flew out of the gaping hole that appeared in the side of the plane midflight and landed on ground 16,000 feet below him.
Miraculously, the phone had no cracks and was still functioning when found by game designer Sean Bates on Jan. 7, per The Verge.
How did a passenger lose his phone?
Tran, according to the Los Angeles Times, was in seat 27A on the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines flight when the passengers in the row in front of him, row 26, witnessed a large hole open on one side of the airplane.
“I was just in disbelief, to be honest. I was like what’s going on here, why does everything feel so weird? ... I was just registering everything in slow motion,” he said about the trip, per the Los Angeles Times.
Tran’s phone, as reported by CBS News, was yanked out of the plane without its charging cord, which was still stuck in the charging port.
Bates’ remarkable discovery
While out on a walk two days later, Bates looked for the door plug that fell out of the plane, as was publicly requested by The National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, according to ABC News.
While inspecting Barnes Road in Portland, Oregon, he found the iPhone under a roadside bush with no scratches. It was still operating with half a battery, displaying a baggage receipt for the flight.
Once Bates discovered the iPhone, he contacted the NTSB about the phone, and the government agency stated to him it was actually the second phone to be found in the area, per People.
According to The Oregonian, one investigator, who was also looking in the same area, met up with Bates to obtain and log the phone from him and report the finding to Alaska Airlines.
What case was used on the iPhone?
When Bates shared his findings to social media, phone case company Spigen revealed that its phone case was on Tran’s iPhone, as stated on a Twitter post shared by the New York Post.
The post also features a text message from a friend of Tran, confirming that the phone was returned back to Tran via mail.
What happened to the door plug?
The door plug that flung off the Alaska Airlines flight was later found in Bob Sauer’s backyard in Portland, per ABC News.
Sauer, a science teacher, discovered the plug crashed in his backyard Sunday evening, Jan. 7, and reported his finding to “Good Morning America” the following Tuesday, saying “When I encountered it, it was really just disbelief.”
He added, “It was very hard to to understand that what everybody was looking for in Portland was actually in my backyard, and I was the first one to actually see it.”
As reported by USA Today, the 63-pound plug is being investigated to see how it flew out from the plane.