iPhone Survives 16,000-Foot Drop From Airplane

An Apple iPhone is “perfectly intact” after it fell 16,000 feet from an Alaska Airlines plane that suffered a mid-flight emergency.

Flight 1282 was forced to make an emergency landing in Portland on Friday after the wall surrounding an emergency exit blew out, sucking out passengers’ clothes and personal items. Among those items were cell phones, one of which turned up on the ground in Oregon. "Found an iPhone on the side of the road, still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for Alaska Airlines,” resident Sean Bates writes on X. “Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly intact." He goes on to say the phone still works perfectly.

Bates says he’s turned the phone over to the National Transportation Safety Board, which promises to return the device to its rightful owner.