Though the infamously indestructible Nokia 3310 may have been discontinued in 2005, the now-bygone brick phone has finally found an equally sturdy successor  — one stubborn iPhone plucked virtually unscathed from the rubble of Friday’s Alaska Airlines disaster.


In the days since Flight 1282 was forced to make a terrifying emergency landing after a fuselage plug on the Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out at roughly 16,000 ft, Sean Bates, a Vancouver, Washington-based game designer, claimed to have discovered an iPhone apparently belonging to a passenger on the now-destroyed aircraft.




“Found an iPhone on the side of the road,” Bates captioned a series of snaps depicting the somehow-not-smashed smartphone, still open to a baggage receipt email from the airline.


Though Bates said the phone was “still in airplane mode with half a battery” in his now-viral Sunday post, it appears his find was far from an anomaly.



“When I called it in, Zoe at @NTSB said it was the SECOND phone to be found,” he continued, noting that he managed to source the phone before the airplane's door plug was located.


While the evidently less-than-foolproof door plug was discovered in a local school teacher’s backyard, one mystery still remains — what screen protector were they using because we need one, stat.