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A fuselage plug on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out shortly after takeoff over the weekend. The plane landed safely, and two phones have been found on the ground.
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Game designer Sean Bates found an iPhone in a bush Sunday that had fallen from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 when it lost a part of its fuselage shortly after takeoff. The phone was undamaged, still on, and had the end of a sheared-off charging cable plugged in. Bates posted pictures of his discovery that afternoon, one of which included the screen showing a still-open email with a baggage receipt.
The phone fell out of the plane when, just a few minutes after takeoff, the Boeing 737 Max 9 explosively decompressed, sending a fuselage plug flying off of the plane and forcing it to turn around and make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport, where it had originally taken off.
The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed during a Sunday briefing that two phones were recovered after falling from the Boeing 737 Max 9 — one was found on the side of the road and another in a yard. In addition, a Portland school teacher found the fuselage plug itself in their backyard.
But how could the phone still be intact? Terminal velocity explains it in part, as does stopping, or negative, acceleration. Wired published a story in 2011 after an iPhone 4 dropped 1,000 feet from a plane and survived. As Wired wrote, when an object is falling, it eventually meets terminal velocity — the maximum speed it can reach before the resistance of the medium it’s falling through (in this case, air) counteracts gravity.
The takeaway from the story is that a phone can only go so fast, and how much the landing surface gives in reaction to the falling phone is important — ground in a wooded area will displace a lot more, accepting and spreading the impact more than, say, concrete. Plus, the iPhone 4, like the phone that dropped from Friday’s flight, was in a case, increasing its odds of survival.
On Saturday, the FAA grounded 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes pending investigation to see if this was indicative of a broader issue. The same day of the incident, The Seattle Times reported that Boeing had requested a safety exemption for an unrelated defect that could cause catastrophic engine damage.