A portion of the Boeing 737 Max's cabin wall blew out during the flight. A smartphone may have survived a drop and damage without being absorbed. It's not just a cell phone.

Half-full battery, airplane mode and not even a scratch: In the US, an iPhone survived a 5,000-meter drop from a Boeing 737, which made an emergency landing on Friday. A man from the northwestern US state of Washington wrote on the online service TikTok on Sunday that after finding an iPhone belonging to one of the passengers, he found the cell phone “very clean and scratch-free in the bushes.”

The Apple cell phone was sucked from the plane when a section of the cabin wall flew out shortly after takeoff. A photo of the device posted by the inventor on online service X shows an intact screen and an emailed package receipt for $70. So the battery was 44 percent charged and the smartphone was still in airplane mode. Apart from the charging cable attachment point, the phone remained the same.

The Washington man said he contacted the NTSB after the discovery. She tells him that the second phone is from a machine someone found.

“a great fortune”

Agency head Jennifer Homandy said at a news conference that the NTSB would “review the phones and then return them.” It was “a great stroke of luck” that the technical glitch that led to the plane's emergency landing “did not end in tragedy”.

Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 was en route to Ontario, California after taking off from Portland in the northwest United States on Friday when a section of the cabin came loose. The plane then turned around and made an emergency landing in Portland 20 minutes later. No one was injured.

After the incident, the FAA ordered an immediate inspection of about 170 Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft and grounded some flights until they were completed. Airlines around the world pulled flights from service, leading to dozens of flight cancellations over the weekend. (APA)