As more debris surfaces from Alaska Airlines' forced landing, an intact iPhone has been found

Oregon residents went on the hunt for spare parts and objects that dropped from an Alaska Airlines flight after a section of the plane fell off in midair.

One man found a fully intact and functioning iPhone that belonged to a passenger on the flight.

"Found an iPhone on the side of the road... Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282 Survived a 16,000 foot drop perfectly in tact!" Sean Bates posted to X alongside a picture of the phone.

Another picture shared by Bates showed the severed wire of a charging cable still plugged into the device.

Flight 1282 was 16,000 feet in the air on its way from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California on Friday night when a section of the fuselage suddenly broke off, leaving a gaping hole in the Boeing 737 Max 9 jet.

Social media videos showed passengers wearing oxygen masks as the plane made an emergency landing back in Portland. All of the passengers and crew landed safely, although a few passengers had minor injuries that required medical attention.

The incident prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to ground 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes around the world.

The NTSB confirmed to USA TODAY that two cell phones "likely" belonging to passengers of the flight were recovered to be returned to their owners.

Another Portland resident, identified as a teacher named Bob by the NTSB, found the plane's door plug in his backyard.

"Bob contacted us at [email protected] with two photos of the door plug and said he found it in his backyard. Thank you, Bob," NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a press conference on Sunday.

Portland residents hunt for lost objects

Some Portland residents went on the hunt for spare parts and objects from the plane, but didn't have the same luck.

Adam Pirkle, a 40-year-old engineer and private pilot, decided to merge his hobbies of flight tracking and cycling when he calculated that the plane's door plug landed two to three miles away.

"I realized this thing happened very close to my house, and I thought that would be a fun way to spend the weekend, to go out and hunt for it," he told USA TODAY.

Pirkle, who runs a private flight tracker, used the plane's speed and the wind speed and direction to deduce where the door plug might have landed.

"I know it was going 440 miles an hour, and I know there was about a 10 mile-an-hour south wind, so that kind of gave me a pretty good inkling," he said.

Once he found out the exact address where the plug was found, he realized it had been right under his nose.

"I biked right down the street. I was probably 50 feet from the thing," he said.

Pirkle had a similarly close call with the iPhone recovered by Bates.

"I was probably 100 feet from that phone before they found it," he said.

Cybele Mayes-Osterman is a breaking news reporter for USA Today. Reach her on email at [email protected]. Follow her on X @CybeleMO.