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iPhone that fell from hole in Alaska 737 MAX flight is found, still open to Mail
- nostromo 3y agoI remember when you couldn't drop an iPhone four feet and have it survive. This one fell several thousand and the screen didn't even crack!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- astrange 3y agoIt's in an Otterbox and might have an extra screen protector though.
- aurareturn 3y agoA lot of things went into my head: * 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
- wannacboatmovie 3y agoDisabling auto-lock is definitely a thing, as anyone that's ever tried to use an iPhone in a car for navigation knows. 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.
- kiwijamo 3y agoWhen I use my phone for navigation it doesn't lock itself. I've observed this behaviour on iOS and Android.
- wharvle 3y agoiOS kinda keeps the map open outside the lock (at least with Apple Maps). Everything else locks behind it. At least on mine.
- Sebb767 3y agoThe behavior I know is that (both iOS and Android) will open the map in foreground even when locked (for example by being turned off and on again via the power button), but it will never go to stand by and lock by itself as long as navigation is open.
- SoftTalker 3y agoGoogle Maps stays open as well. The phone is locked, but the map stays active on the screen.
- grotorea 3y agoThere is an "don't lock" app feature, most obviously used by video apps but I've seen a couple others offering this feature.
- MenhirMike 3y agoAlso, since the charging cable was technically still attached, I wonder if that turns it off as well.
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y agoIt doesn't. Auto-Lock would have had to be explicitly disabled.
- dgrin91 3y agoDoing a bit of research I found a few sources that say that the terminal velocity for a generic smartphone is ~20-40mph, which isn't that much. Lots of phones survive car crashes with higher speeds than that. Add to that landing on softer soil and maybe even breaking fall with branches and I'm not shocked it survived. No screen crack is pretty good though. Smartphone screens have gotten crazy good recently
- bagels 3y agoThere's no way it's 20-40 mph. They're dense enough for much higher velocities.
- lethal-radio 3y agoConfirmed on wolframalpha. Terminal velocity is about 9mph https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=terminal+velocity+of+an+iPhone&assumption=%7B%22F%22%2C+%22TimeToFall%3AWithDrag%22%2C+%22Cd%22%7D+-%3E%220.1%22&assumption=%7B%22F%22%2C+%22TimeToFall%3AWithDrag%22%2C+%22H%22%7D+-%3E%2212000+ft%22&assumption=%7B%22F%22%2C+%22TimeToFall%3AWithDrag%22%2C+%22d%22%7D+-%3E%2212000+ft%22&assumption=%7B%22F%22%2C+%22TimeToFall%3AWithDrag%22%2C+%22rho%22%7D+-%3E%221.29+kg%2Fm%5E3%22&assumption=%7B%22F%22%2C+%22TimeToFall%3AWithDrag%22%2C+%22A%22%7D+-%3E%221.28+m%5E2%22 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=terminal+velocity+of+an...
- bagels 3y agoExactly one iphone had a mass that low, 5s. None of them have >1m^2 surface area.
- tjmc 3y ago1.28sqm projected surface area? That's a very a big iphone.
- xxs 3y ago>a very a big iphone. putting mildly, still it's lovely to see the mix the input of imperial and metric units. the 'fluid' density is quite wrong as well. 1.29 kg/m^3 -> almost 777 times lighter than water, it's similar to air. By its dimension iphone 15 should be around twice heavier than water.
- whateveracct 3y agoI have auto-lock disabled when I'm not in low power mode. Wish I could add an explicit toggle for it to my tray though.
- pxeboot 3y ago> Damn, he paid Alaska $70 for baggage fee? 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/checked-bags https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/baggage/checke...
- elzbardico 3y agoNon technical users do some things that we don't even dream about doing, like setting auto-lock to "Never". 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.
- tavavex 3y agoI honestly feel like technical users would be using the "Never" setting more often than non-technical. When testing an app on the phone, it's really annoying having to re-unlock it because you looked away at a different screen for a while. Checking it on Android, never locking is a developer setting, regular display settings have a maximum of 30 minutes.
- TwoNineFive 3y agoNo, you are right, the plebs are wrong. It's a feelz > realz world where people vote with their feelz and you made them feel bad because they are doing dumb bad things. It should always be possible to set a device timeout to never and allow WEP56 auth on your WiFi AP, but there should be a warning about the implications.
- planb 3y agoI have auto lock disabled, because I'm the one to decide when I don't need to look at my screen anymore. But that's different from not requiring faceid/passcode upon unlock.
- 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stephenr 3y ago> Damn, he paid Alaska $70 for baggage fee? Based on https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/baggage/checked-bags 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.
- spuz 3y agoWell in Europe, you pay about £23 per flight just for a carry-on bag and £30 per flight for a check-in bag so I'm not sure things are any different here.
- stephenr 3y agoTo be clear: I'm not European nor do I live in Europe. I just looked up a flight, for example London to Paris. The cheapest BA ticket includes hand luggage for £57 each way, or the next option with checked baggage is £14 more. I'm sure there probably are cheap-and-shit airlines that include nothing with the ticket price as you mention, but there clearly are also options where you pay a small fraction more (and certainly less than "additional baggage" charges) and have baggage included.
- ghaff 3y agoA lot of Europeans fly those chip as shit airlines within Europe.
- stephenr 3y agoThat's their choice - the comment I replied to phrased it as if every airline charges extra for any baggage of any kind, not that cheap airlines charge for 'extras'.
- relativ575 3y ago
- bombcar 3y agoGiven the circumstances Alaska should refund the baggage fee
- unglaublich 3y agoLufthansa wanted $450,- for an oversized bag (300cm sides, 30kg) on a 3h flight. Awful company.
- astrange 3y agoI flew them recently and was amazed at how low quality the English text on all their websites/emails was. It's about as bad as you'd see in Asia 15 years ago. They did let me prepurchase a pretzel though. (And then never gave it to me on the flight.)
- bombcar 3y agoIt’s often cheaper to upgrade to first (and get free oversize bags) than to play the baggage fee. Always check!
- butlike 3y agoFuck Lufthansa. I bought a round trip, but bought a different flight out for circumstances not pertinent to the story. Anyways, on the return trip, they wouldn't let me check-in, for a flight leaving in 2 hours, with a valid ticket through them, because I didn't take the departure flight out. I STILL don't understand the angle there, but I learned you can buy a plane ticket to anywhere in the world (except Australia and NZ), day-of; for about $2500.
- lbschenkel 3y agoI'm just the messenger and I'm not claiming it's fair, but this is standard procedure everywhere in the world: when you buy a round-trip ticket (single PNR), if you are a no-show for any leg then you're forfeiting the whole ticket. If the ticket for example includes a train ride to the airport, and you don't show up for the train ride, you're forfeiting the flight as well. Some airlines might not enforce that if you're deemed an important enough customer for them, but I just want to bring this up because being a no-show in the outbound flight and keeping the return flight is not a right that customers have in general, basically in any IATA airline. It's not really Lufthansa specific, those are rules that the whole industry applies.
- olliej 3y agoMy first thought was if that hit someone it could kill them, and then i remembered an entire door fell off as well, and all apparently landing in a suburban neighborhood.
- pants2 3y agoThere are a surprising number of injuries every year from phones falling out of roller coasters and hitting people!
- labster 3y agoMeanwhile, a 1 meter drop onto a wood floor cracked my screen. Device longevity is weird.
- wenc 3y agoNo protective case?
- elzbardico 3y agoI never trusted/liked protective cases. Modern phones are already too big, and I feel like the added bulk makes it more likely that I will drop it. Having been using the same IPhone 12 Pro Max for a few years now without a case. It has survived quite a few falls from a table by now, no screen cracked, only some dents and scratches on the chassis.
- andenacitelli 3y agoApple’s SE series is actually really nice if you don’t like the trend of bigger phones - it’s the same (or similar) internals as the new ones but in a small form factor (4.9 inches? Whatever the 6s had). I don’t want a large phone that barely fits in my pocket, but I want decent internals, so I have one. Apple is by no means a perfect company but I think the SE was one of their correct decisions.
- elzbardico 3y agoYeah, as I see myself using my phone less and less I feel that an SE form factor would be a lot more convenient to me. Because of remote work I am almost always close to my MBP, my Air, or a tablet. Car infotainment screens are good enough nowadays, and I don't need a giant screen to hail an Uber or paying something. Giant screens are for me an habit I got when I used to commute hours everyday in a car or bus, it doesn't make too much sense nowadays if I really think about it.
- sp332 3y agoEdit - never mind, had dates wrong.
- justinclift 3y agohttps://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685
- makeitdouble 3y agoSeems to have landed on soft terrain, which makes a world of difference. The bit of charging cable ripped at the bottom still tells how harsh the journey was before the landing.
- btilly 3y agoI have a story about that, from the movie producer Fred Zinneman. 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- esaym 3y ago[flagged]
- herewulf 3y agoNitpick: The parachute likely opened _partially_ (as is common for such malfunctions) so that impacting a tree wouldn't cause injury or death. 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.
- btilly 3y agoYou might be right about the main parachute. 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.
- upon_drumhead 3y agoIt says SOS mode, not airplane mode. Wonder why it’s not getting a cell signal. Maybe it is broken internally.
- pxeboot 3y agoIt could be using a non-US carrier without roaming enabled.
- kemayo 3y agoThe flight was from the US to Canada. It's very plausible that the cell plan doesn't have international roaming. EDIT: per replies, this was entirely wrong, it was a domestic flight
- 20kleagues 3y agoFlight was from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California - it was a domestic flight.
- jackyard86 3y agoApple is really focusing on this tell and tale kind of adversiting recently, I guess.
- kemayo 3y agoAre you implying that this is some sort of PR plant by Apple, or just saying this is the kind of thing they'll definitely be bringing up again later in actual PR?
- jackyard86 3y agoI've never seen a single article about Android devices being so durable that it survived a great disaster, or saving its owner's life from polar bear or something. I believe it's their PR plan.
- stephenr 3y ago> I believe it's their PR plan. ... What exactly do you think they planned? The photos show a person's name on an email from an airline. Are you suggesting they planted a fake phone on the side of a road, with a fake email from the airline about baggage for said airline open on the screen, and then had a hired stooge "find" the phone, and then either (a) make a false claim to the NTSB or (b) have a second stooge impersonate an NTSB officer on camera....? Or perhaps it's more nefarious than that. Apple bribed a bunch of Boeing workers to be shit at their jobs for the last 24 months with the hopes that a panel would fail eventually; Concurrently they hired dozens upon dozens of stooges to take flights on routes using the previously-hobbled Boeing's, each of them carrying an iPhone in every pocket they have, so that when the inevitable happens they can make it rain iPhones, such that eventually some will land somewhere soft enough to survive the fall, and there will be enough of them that people will just find them on their morning walk... Maybe the Android owners all got eaten by their respective polar bears so there isn't a story to push?
- jackyard86 3y agoSame are these devices function, but Apple is paying for those who share their stories.
- irrational 3y agoIt is strange two phones have been found, but not the door. Most of the Cedar Hills/Beaverton area is houses and shops with sporadic green spaces that aren’t that large in comparison. It is possible the door fell into a green space, but the odds are it did not. I imagine it is in someone’s backyard, but it is January in rainy Oregon. People aren’t doing yard work right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t found until Spring when someone goes out to their backyard and discovers it. 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.
- cozzyd 3y agoThe door can probably glide quite a bit farther, maybe?
- photonbeam 3y agoThe phones are trackable via gps
- Tempest1981 3y agoBoeing needs "Find My Door"
- jkestner 3y agoThey should make the whole plane out of AirTags
- adrianmonk 3y agoGood thing ships aren't losing doors. As far as I know, Apple doesn't offer SeaTags.
- resolutebat 3y agoWell, at least it was the side that fell off, not the front. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
- sicklife 3y agoThat's remind me of Nokia. Maybe Apple has reached it's peak.
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoMy nokia never needed a condom, it would vomit its battery upon hitting the ground but after a little bit of massaging, it was fine.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> nokia never needed a condom Neither does my iPhone. Unless cosmetic marks irritate you, they’re plenty durable without a case.
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoThe three iPhones laying on my desk with a cracked screen due to a fall from the height of roughly one meter beg to differ. Good to hear they can survive for some, though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aaronbrethorst 3y agoI hope Cuong Tran got his $70 for two bags refunded by Alaska Airlines.
- snvzz 3y agoit was found... unlocked and displaying Mail application. 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?
- kiririn 3y agoA locked phone is exactly what you want in an emergency /s
- snvzz 3y agoEmergency functionality works irrespective of lock status.
- kiririn 3y agoOf course, however I am imagining a car accident where a phone was displaying maps/music/etc suddenly locking itself. The screen being lit up could save valuable seconds in finding it when it’s tossed around the car But judging by the downvotes there is something I am missing with this
- bell-cot 3y ago"Situation is an Emergency for you" !== "Best action is to use your phone's Emergency functionality".
- quickthrower2 3y agoSame/similar shock as dropping the phone. Should it lock on drop? Weird feature to add.
- akira2501 3y agoI assume it partly depends on how much lateral velocity the phone had. If it landed at a good angle with respect to the train and "slid" away most of it's energy, then perhaps nothing unusual would be noticed. Anyways is it the obvious thing to lock a phone merely because of a large jolt?
- Scoundreller 3y agoThis is why I have a little piece of retroreflective tape on my phone. How to wrap it on the front with the all-glass fronts is up to you.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MongoTheMad 3y agoI am glad these phones were not Nokias. Who knows what damage they would have caused.
- oaiey 3y agoWhat a comment. But the young generation does not know anymore what this means.
- DennisP 3y agoI'm glad we know the cause of the accident now. If the FAA had just explained how severe the consequences would be if someone used a phone on a flight, I think we all would have been more compliant.
- a-dub 3y agomy eyebrows may have raised when they left washington years ago, but these recent safety incidents have really caused me to start to doubt the new whartonized boeing's commitment to sparkle motion...
- zo1 3y agoI honestly think that subtle and accepted incompetence is becoming pervasive all around, and airplane manufacturers aren't excluded from that. We need to strongly move back to a meritocracy otherwise our civilization will fall, one airplane door at a time.
- astrange 3y agoThe word "meritocracy" was popularized by a book whose point was that it's a bad idea that can't work. Trying it is eg how you get Peter Principled. Sortition or other random promotion methods are actually the most theoretically correct afaik.
- bombcar 3y agoOr the classic “nolo episcopari“ - only promote those who don’t want it. :)
- earth2mars 3y agoWhat if it fell on someone's head? Would they have survived?
- mulmen 3y agoDepends how fast they are moving relative to the phone.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoReally hard to tell for sure, but assuming it orients itself aerodynamically, exposing a 75x10mm surface area to the wind, with a drag coefficient of 1.0 (slightly less than a cube) and a mass of 180g, then omnicalc says it'd be moving at 225 km/h (62.5 m/s), giving a kinetic energy of 352 Joule. 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.
- paganel 3y agoAnd assuming that hypothetical person wouldn't have survived, who would have been made liable for the person's death? The owner of the phone? Air Alaska? Boeing?
- dolmen 3y agoReminder: meteors fall everyday on earth.
- neilv 3y agoI would've preferred that the identifying information of the person had been edited out. 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.
- foota 3y agoMaybe they did this to help the phone find it's owner?
- ivan_gammel 3y agoPosting it online to find owner is absolutely unnecessary. The phone could be returned to the owner by contacting the airline.
- pxeboot 3y agoI imagine this will end up in an NTSB evidence warehouse for years.
- ars 3y agoNo it won't. They'll log where it landed and that's about it. What kind of of evidence do you think it has on it?
- spirit557 3y agoObscured the credit card # but didn't think to grant the passenger some privacy and obscure their full name?
- CyanBird 3y agoLikely because the aim is to find the actual owner of the phone?
- ivan_gammel 3y agoIt is not very smart to find owner this way, when you can just reach the airline, which has contacts of all passengers.
- ryandrake 3y agoIf I was the passenger I’d want to know it’s found and have the possibility of finding the finder. Best would be to post it online like this—I’d see it that way. If they turn it in to the airline it’s probably going to be stuck in bureaucracy for months. If they turn it in to the NTSB, it’ll be gone for years.
- tavavex 3y agoIf I wanted to reach out to the owner, one could just open the phone app on the already unlocked phone and call anyone that seems like a close relative. Hoping for the owner to just randomly stumble into an internet post seems very impractical, considering that the phone likely contains a substantial amount of info about the owner. 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?
- lultimouomo 3y agoJust call "Mum" and be done
- chippiewill 3y ago
- rramadass 3y agoDamn! Apple has better QC than Boeing! Apple should seriously think about getting into the Aeroplane Manufacturing business; its there for their taking :-)
- justinclift 3y ago> better QC than Boeing! Clearly that hasn't been a high bar for a long time. :(
- antomeie 3y agoRemains to be seen if the door landed unlocked as well. /s
- bombcar 3y agoMaybe the last command registered on this phone is “Siri open side door”.
- vachina 3y agoThis must be some elaborate joke. How did that iPhone stay unlocked? The screen stayed on the entire time? And if the screen stayed on the entire time, how does the battery last that long? (In winter weather no less)
- ImAnAmateur 3y agoThe person who found it said in a Tiktok video linked in the Twitter replies below that the phone didn't have a lock on it so he opened it up to that mail page. I'm not gonna quibble about him changing his story, but it's notable.
- jeffhuys 3y agoI have my phone set to never lock automatically, so that’s one part of the equation plausible.
- evan_ 3y agoOn airplane mode, not doing anything.
- xivzgrev 3y agoThis isn’t surprising - there was a wired story about phones surviving from planes back in 2011 (1) 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-of-an-iphone/ https://www.wired.com/2011/04/what-is-the-terminal-velocity-...
- mrandish 3y agoYes, that and it also had a case and screen protector on it. Plus it landed on grass/dirt vs asphalt.
- HenryBemis 3y agoIt landed on grass/dirt. On the photos on Twitter there seems to be some thick vegetation. Seeing the drops on the screen, if it has rained, then it would make the ground even softer. If it would have landed on the asphalt, concrete, marble it would have looked very different!
- tetha 3y agoVegetation can also help to break velocity. People fell out of planes and survived by falling into trees and snow underneath. The smaller branches of the trees very much acted like a crumple zone on a car - giving way and breaking, but taking away little chunks of energy everytime.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago> the phone itself is fragile Modern electronics are quite the opposite of fragile, I'd say.
- bmitc 3y agoIt's not a huge leap of faith to assume they mean the phone as in the thing covered in glass and fragile touchscreen.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gnicholas 3y agoLooks like it was in a protective case — can anyone tell what kind?
- astrange 3y agoOtterbox Lumen or similar.
- MrOxiMoron 3y agothis raises the question; what do people do with their iPhones to crack the screen? terminal velocity is not enough speed it seems.
- speedgoose 3y agoThey drop it on harder surfaces than grass on mud or hit corners of furnitures with the phone in the pocket for example. I tend to do that.
- nottorp 3y agoIf you have one of the idiotic models where the glass extends to the side, you just need to drop it on a hard surface. My iPhone XS is cracked now starting from two opposite corners. Funny enough, the touch screen still works perfectly, it's just the outer layer of glass that's gone so I plan to keep it 1-2 more years. [1] The newer and older models with a metal band around the edges should be more resilient. I'm probably dropping phones with the same frequency [2], but the older ones with the metal were just fine(tm) when i stopped using them, just the metal band dented in places. [1] I'd get it replaced but no way I'm paying Apple prices for this old phone, and the 3rd party repair shops warned me they may have to replace the whole display if the outer glass doesn't come off neatly and that will lead to iOS complaining it's not a genuine display onscreen. [2] or maybe more often, since the rounded edges all glass design is easier to drop...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ta1243 3y agoWhy don't they make planes out of iphones -- or better make them out of Nokia 3210s
- Apocryphon 3y agoNot to accidentally trigger the 9/11 truthers (it's been too long for them to be around, yeah?) but this reminds me how several of the hijackers' passports were discovered near the various crash sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PENTTBOM#Passports_recovered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PENTTBOM#Passports_recovered
- epolanski 3y agoNot gonna lie, I'm both awed and confused. 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.
- walteweiss 3y agoI don’t get it. The original tweet says the phone has been found near the road. Where are all the guesses that the phone fell from an airplane? Could it be someone opening email in the car, and someone else (a kid) to take the phone and throw it out of the window. Then they decide ‘oh, duck we don’t have time to look for it’ and continue their journey without the phone. That’s my first thought after reading the original tweet. But I see lots of ‘feel from the plane’ comments. Is it confirmed the phone fell? Of course I believe it survived the fall, considering I myself shuttered a number of iPhones by simply falling out of my pocket on a concrete floor.
- shawabawa3 3y agoThe phone was open to an email of an Alaska Air flight confirmation for the specific flight that it fell out of. That's pretty solid evidence
- walteweiss 3y agoCannot the email be opened prior to the flight, while being in a car?
- danbruc 3y agoIn 1972 flight attendant Vesna Vulović survived falling from 33k feet [1] pinned inside the remains of the fuselage after an explosion destroyed her airplane mid-flight killing everyone else. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
- beacham 3y agoThanks for sharing. I thought this was the most interesting paragraph: “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]”
- bombcar 3y agoIs there anything an excessive amount of coffee can’t fix? It seems she’s the opposite of that Hawaii flight that lost the roof and one flight attendant.
- offices 3y agoI think the positioning is even more amazing than the survival. OP's feed doesn't look like they were intentionally searching for it, so the phone had to land close enough to a road/path for someone to be likely to walk past it and see it but not a) onto the road b) into the bush a few feet away.
- hasty_pudding 3y agoBoy Apple marketing tactics are getting creative.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- steveBK123 3y agoSo I think we can now update the old "why don't they make the plane out of the stuff they make the black box out of" to "why don't they put the plane in an iPhone case?" right?
- DeathArrow 3y agoIsn't this good publicity for Apple? A phone that survives a 16,000 foot fall?
- nojvek 3y agoIt seems crazy to me how much attention flying accidents get vs car accidents. No fatalities in this flight. 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_in_U.S._by_year 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.
- InCityDreams 3y ago€$£.
- Snow_Falls 3y agoPlanes get so much attention precisely because they're so safe. If we reported ever car crash, we'd not have time for much else whereas planes hardly ever crash. Every crash is international news with national investigations because they hardly ever happen. Now try explaining that to someone with a fear of flying.
- meepmorp 3y agoI think the comparative rarity of plane accidents is part of why they're such a big deal. I've been a number of car crashes and survived relatively unscathed. Neither I, nor anyone I know (and likely a few levels of separation further) has ever been involved in any aircraft accident/incident. 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.
- Someone 3y agoFTA: “one revelation seemed to defy the laws of physics: one of the mobile phones that had been sucked out of the Boeing Co. 737 Max 9 jet’s cabin remained in functioning condition after a 16,000-foot tumble.” 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-falling-iPhone 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.
- arghwhat 3y agoIt's almost as if the laws of physics align entirely with the observed result! Baffling!
- mensetmanusman 3y agoIf the iPhone self-stabilized an acceleration maneuver while using its charging port speakers to build acceleration while playing Metallica, maybe it could reach the sound barrier and truly self-destruct.
- wiseowise 3y agoSo you want to say that phone doesn’t accelerate to infinite speed and doesn’t pulverize itself (or Earth) on impact? WOW!
- foobarian 3y agoI wonder if a smart phone would actually behave differently due to its shape. As kids we loved to throw little paper rectangles because they fall by spinning around the long axis (try it!). Smartphones being rectangles, I could see it auto-rotate like this and slow down further.
- jprd 3y agohttps://archive.is/hucUp https://archive.is/hucUp
- mx_03 3y agoOnce it reaches its maximum velocity the altitude doesnt really matter. However I dont know how to calculate that maximum velocity and the minimum required altitute. From the very short snippet I can read (paywall) I dont know if the phone landed in concrete or not.
- ciupicri 3y agoWhat about the heat? If the fall is longer won't the phone heat up more?
- JKCalhoun 3y agoAnd yet the air rushing past provides cooling.... Maybe you're thinking about an iPhone de-orbiting from ISS. That would be a different story.
- simcop2387 3y agoNope, at the altitude planes are at, the atmosphere is much much colder than at ground level. Along with that the terminal velocity of the phone is going to be under the speed of sound so there won't really be any meaningful compression going on to heat up the air around it like you get with a descent from space. That heating essentially happens (this is simplified) because a space craft is going much faster than it's terminal velocity at the given altitudes it's passing through so it compresses the air below it, heating it just like you'd expect from the ideal gas law. It happens to be that it heats it so much that it makes a super-heated plasma so you end up with what looks like fire (not sure if there's actual combustion happening, but i wouldn't be shocked) surrounding the craft. That's also why once it's slowed down by the friction and air resistance, the plasma dissipates and is no longer a problem for re-entry. Now if we were to launch the phone at several times the speed of sound we could probably get the same thing to happen but I'm doubtful that a phone could survive the acceleration in the first place.
- eptcyka 3y agoAt the terminal velocity of an iPhone, the air passing through will do more to cool it than to heat it up due to friction.
- mbauman 3y agoThis isn't much more than the original twitter post: https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- earthling8118 3y agoPeople in another spot were complaining that the auto lock maximum is apparently 5 minutes. It seems odd that this number isn't customizable.
- diggan 3y agoSeems odd overall, yeah. But this is Apple we're talking about, they generally don't offer customisation. And when they do, they usually just offer a few options instead of freeform.
- zamadatix 3y agoHow you can't just disable the camera on the lock screen without disabling the entire camera app (and no way to disable the flashlight functionality, as far as I have been able to tell) is beyond me. It's not even about customization, these are things people can do without your lock code! Imagine going to show someone a recent photo and something you didn't take pops up instead.
- diggan 3y agoIn general I agree with you, but > 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.
- ngneer 3y agoHero protective case!
- simplicio 3y agoGood PR for Apple, less so for Boeing.
- asdajksah2123 3y agoCrazy considering multiple iPhones (latest being an iPhone 11) haven't survived a few feet fall for me (no case...I'm extremely particular about using a case now).
- mensetmanusman 3y agoMust be a U-shaped curve of survival rate versus drop height.
- kadoban 3y agoRealistically it's more of a rounded L shape. Once you reach terminal velocity, you're not getting any more energy. Then all you need is to get really lucky and/or hit something relatively soft, like grass on some less-dense ground.
- CharlesW 3y agoAlso, how it lands (corner-first or not) and what it lands on (concrete or tile vs. dirt with ground cover) makes a huge difference.
- lxgr 3y agoIt's well established that intermediate fall heights are the most dangerous, since the phone doesn't have enough time to rotate into the optimal landing position and brace for landing. Or was that for cats?
- pantalaimon 3y agoIt takes the phone some time to switch into airplane mode and deploy the landing gear.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- earthling8118 3y agoI've never owned an iPhone (never will either) but I'm in the opposite boat these days. Cases degrade my phone experience and result in more waste to throw away. These phones are seemingly built like tanks now. I'd be hard pressed to break the screen on this one. It's survived falls on concrete no problem. Generally I don't let it fall because it's too expensive to aimlessly drop.
- topkai22 3y agoThe charging cable was attached and ripped out with the phone, so it probably functioned as a tail, reducing the velocity a bit. Still, it wouldn’t be much. Impressive survivability by the phone.
- mbauman 3y agoWhat remained of the charging cable was not much of a cable — it was barely the connector that remained. https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744247194448961725#m https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744247194448961725#m
- topkai22 3y agoAhh, clearly I was wrong then. Truly impressive.
- lxgr 3y agoWow, if that's USB-C and it still charges, I'm going to stop worrying about reduced drop stability (while plugged in) compared to Lightning iPhones.
- rainbowzootsuit 3y agoProbably close to the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
- barryrandall 3y agoThis will be cited by Boeing as proof that the failure of their aircraft wasn't that bad.
- sshillo 3y agoTerminal velocity of an iphone should be around 110mph according to this https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6813341/Terminal_Velocity_of_Phone__Rev3.0.pdf https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6813341/T...
- SirMaster 3y agoAnd surely it doesn't need that height to achieve it. So at some point the height stops mattering.
- rthkljlkrj 3y ago[dead]
- 9front 3y agoWhen did Mr. Bates, the X poster, find the phone? The time shows 2:21 and the picture was taken during daylight. Is that 2:21AM or 2:21PM? If in 12hr mode I'd expect the later.
- K2L8M11N2 3y agoIn 24h mode it would show as 02:21.
- hatsunearu 3y agoIt probably survived because it hit soft ground and not like granite or asphalt.
- elorant 3y agoThere are also trees behind the spot so it could have landed on them and then ended on the ground.
- kpw94 3y agoMy guess is, given state of the charging connector still attached but ripped off (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914210): 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.
- vedosity 3y agoIn skydiving, it isn't unheard of for someone to have their phone fall out of their pocket and survive impact without the screen shattering. That's from ~13000ft, but once the phone reaches terminal velocity, it's all the same impact force regardless of altitude. I think dirt/grass is just a lot softer than the things we usually drop our phones over, like concrete or tile.
- ryandrake 3y agoI'm surprised it didn't break past the strain relief. Everyone with an iPhone has a handful of charging cables that end up like [1]. That's where they tend to fail first. 1: https://www.engadget.com/apple-patent-application-frayed-cables-154641511.html https://www.engadget.com/apple-patent-application-frayed-cab...
- stjuma 3y agoA small piece of shrink tube fixes this. The difficult part is to squeeze it onto the connector
- orev 3y agoI’ve never had a cable break like that. Many people just don’t know how to handle cables and treat them like rope without any knowledge of bend radius, internal wire twists, etc. (and don’t care if they crush them).
- quaffapint 3y agoI was in Costa Rica taking an aerial tramway which was about 75 ft up over dirt/rocky hill and my Pixel 6a (with just a basic back case) fell out of my pocket, hit the metal floor and fell out the doorway. The very kind tour people actually went and found it and returned it with not even a scratch on it. Not exactly 16,000 ft, but I was still amazed and felt very lucky. The only damage was my wife being right that I should have put a strap on it.
- Jiro 3y agoThe amount of force created when something hits the ground at terminal velocity depends on its mass, which varies with the cube of its size (with additional effects because it's not a cube or sphere). The amount of cross-sectional area over which this force is exerted varies with the square of its size. So when a small object hits the ground, that's a lot less force per cross sectional area than when a large object hits the ground. You'd expect the iPhone to take proportionately less damage than a person even not considering that it also has a smaller terminal velocity.
- ijhuygft776 3y agomaximum speed comes way before 16000 ft... but either way, what surface did it fall on? It says on the side of the road, so Im going to guess grass.
- neycoda 3y agoTry dropping it from 2 feet and watch the screen shatter.
- bigbacaloa 3y ago[dead]
- hhsectech 3y agoThe terminal velocity of an iPhone is around 25-30mph. Past a certain height, it doesn't matter how high up the device is. 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.
- jvidalv 3y agoInterestingly, but last month while climbing (actually doing ferratas, if you don't know what it is check it out, very fun and friendly) in a mountain the phone fell of my pocket, easily 35 meters free fall onto the forest below. 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.
- neop1x 3y agoKPTV interviews with the guy who found it, the woman who found a headrest and the guy who found the door https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=To-viCd1Ow4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=To-viCd1Ow4