Two cell phones were recovered from the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jet that had an inflight explosive episode as it flew across Oregon over the weekend.
The incident occurred on Friday just as the plane was making its way to Ontario, California.
During a news conference on Sunday, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy confirmed that the devices were recovered by residents in the area where the door plug fell from the structure.
“Some community members found a cell phone in a yard and a cell phone on the side of the road and contacted us and handed them in,” she said.
One of the devides, which appears to be an iPhone, still appeared to be completely intact and functional after it dropped from 16,000 feet in the sky. The cell phone still had part of a charger attached to it.
One of those residents appeared to have posted his discovery to X, formerly Twitter, writing, “found an iPhone on the side of the road… Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282.”
That is true the atmosphere is less dense at high altitudes. But 16,000 feet is really not that high up. Humans can still breathe without oxygen at that altitude (not well but well enough). Short answer is the phone didn’t fall from a high enough hight to burn up. And as things fall they fall into denser air so the air pushes on them and slows them down.
As a comparison
Hell we are all still learning the only way to ask hard questions to ask all the easy ones first