Phone lost in hull of plane

merlib · Mar 22, 2019

This has to be the weirdest way a person can lose their phone! My dd is currently in Italy on a school trip that she is chaperoning. Got a message from her that while on the way to Italy, her phone slipped off her lap and fell into the hull of the plane!!! Didn't know that could even happen! Her message said that she hopes to get her phone back when the travel back through Paris on their way home -- what do you thnk the odds are that she will actually get the phone back? I told her not to count on it :-(.

Micca · Mar 22, 2019

That's crazy, if she gets her phone back it'll be a miracle. OTOH, maybe it's happened before and they've had success finding them. I'm like you--How is that even possible? If a phone can slip through there'd be all kinds of stuff in the hull. Hope this doesn't spoil her trip. At least she can look forward to getting a new phone

Please let us know how it turns out!

Jennasis · Mar 22, 2019

I nearly lost my driver's license into the toilet of an airplane once. It fell out of pocket and into the toilet and sat, teetering on the little metal flap...slowly sliding towards the abyss. It was horrifying.

kdonnel · Mar 22, 2019

Phones get lost in business and first class seats often enough that warnings are given to occupants not to move the chair if you can’t locate your phone. They don’t want it to crush the battery and cause a fire. You are to contact the flight attendant and they have tools to take the chair apart.

GAN · Mar 22, 2019

Wow ...who would have known! I thought I heard everything possible this week -I guess not....

DLgal · Mar 22, 2019

She is never seeing her phone again.It's gone. They aren't going to take the plane apart to find a phone.

crazymama · Mar 23, 2019

The obvious question is how the heck did it slip into the hull? Are there holes in the floor that I have never noticed before?

sam_gordon · Mar 23, 2019

Sorry, hard to believe it's in the hull. My guess is she either left it in the seat back pocket (and doesn't want to own up to it) or it fell to the floor and slid around. I've told the story on here from when DS lost his phone on a plane. It apparently fell to the floor while he was sleeping, slid forward during decent, and another passenger picked it up, not only took it off the plane, but took it home. We had the FA's helping us look under the seats, on the floor, etc, before just giving up.

We did get the phone back the next day.

merlib · Mar 23, 2019

sam_gordon said:
Sorry, hard to believe it's in the hull. My guess is she either left it in the seat back pocket (and doesn't want to own up to it) or it fell to the floor and slid around. I've told the story on here from when DS lost his phone on a plane. It apparently fell to the floor while he was sleeping, slid forward during decent, and another passenger picked it up, not only took it off the plane, but took it home. We had the FA's helping us look under the seats, on the floor, etc, before just giving up.

We did get the phone back the next day.

Love how you automatically believe she lied! My dd is an adult chaperoning a bunch of school kids, she isn’t going to lie in front of them! I too find it strange that she was told it slipped into the hull of the plane, but that isn’t on her! She has been told she MAY get it back when they go back through Paris, which is where the plane she was on landed. I’ll post on the thread the results just for closure.

Sandeep1 · Mar 23, 2019

merlib said:
Love how you automatically believe she lied! My dd is an adult chaperoning a bunch of school kids, she isn’t going to lie in front of them! I too find it strange that she was told it slipped into the hull of the plane, but that isn’t on her! She has been told she MAY get it back when they go back through Paris, which is where the plane she was on landed. I’ll post on the thread the results just for closure.

He's not saying she lied, only that she is mistaken. Unless someone did a search of the hull, how can anyone confirm that's where the phone is? And if the hull was searched and phone found, why wasn't it returned to her?

SirDuff · Mar 24, 2019

Sandeep1 said:
He's not saying she lied, only that she is mistaken.

Actually, he did say that she lied - unless she only sub-consciously doesn't want own up to it.

It's not something I've ever heard of (and a quick Google search didn't yield anything), but no reason to think that the OP's daughter is lying (I might think it possible if she were a child, but the OP said she's chaperoning the trip, so clearly an adult).

sam_gordon said:
Sorry, hard to believe it's in the hull. My guess is she either left it in the seat back pocket (and doesn't want to own up to it)

kdonnel said:
Phones get lost in business and first class seats often enough that warnings are given to occupants not to move the chair if you can’t locate your phone. They don’t want it to crush the battery and cause a fire. You are to contact the flight attendant and they have tools to take the chair apart.

Doesn't need to be a first or business class seat - *any* seat can crush the phone and all passengers are told to ask for help if they lose their phone.

Which actually means I'm surprised that the airline is fairly laissez-faire (they may find the phone). If they think it is in the hull, they really need to find it (even if it means taking the plane out of circulation), I would think.

sam_gordon · Mar 24, 2019

merlib said:
Love how you automatically believe she lied!

SirDuff said:
Actually, he did say that she lied - unless she only sub-consciously doesn't want own up to it.

Both of you need to read my entire post. I included lying as ONE possibility, along with the phone just falling to the floor and sliding around. I even gave my own example of a phone falling to the floor and sliding around. Instead, you focus on my calling her a liar. I know phones are thin, but a) most people have a case on theirs, adding to the thickness and b) even without a case, I have a hard time believing there's an opening wide enough and straight enough for a phone to fit through. I just went with two more likely answers. Being left in a seat cushion is another strong possibility.

kdonnel · Mar 24, 2019

My daughter dropped her phone in the back seat of my wife's car several years ago. It ended up sliding into a just barely phone sized slot under the front passenger seat. I actually had to remove the seat and pull up the carpet to retrieve the phone.

I don't doubt that the phone could fall into a similar sized slot on a plane and be lost until part of the plane was disassembled.

IDoDis · Mar 24, 2019

kdonnel said:
My daughter dropped her phone in the back seat of my wife's car several years ago. It ended up sliding into a just barely phone sized slot under the front passenger seat. I actually had to remove the seat and pull up the carpet to retrieve the phone.

I don't doubt that the phone could fall into a similar sized slot on a plane and be lost until part of the plane was disassembled.

We have a small area of our car between the seat and the center console that we call "the black hole." Once you drop something in that spot, you'll never get it back!

mamamary · Mar 24, 2019

IDoDis said:
We have a small area of our car between the seat and the center console that we call "the black hole." Once you drop something in that spot, you'll never get it back!

We have that also. My husband dropped the keys in there and we got them out a few months ago when we had the car worked on. They were in there about 4 years.

sam_gordon · Mar 24, 2019

kdonnel said:
My daughter dropped her phone in the back seat of my wife's car several years ago. It ended up sliding into a just barely phone sized slot under the front passenger seat. I actually had to remove the seat and pull up the carpet to retrieve the phone.

I don't doubt that the phone could fall into a similar sized slot on a plane and be lost until part of the plane was disassembled.

I don't know many car seats that are high enough to store a backpack in though (like on an airplane). I'm guessing if your car's seat was elevated 6-12", you would have been able to reach the phone. Apples & oranges.

kdonnel · Mar 24, 2019

sam_gordon said:
I don't know many car seats that are high enough to store a backpack in though (like on an airplane). I'm guessing if your car's seat was elevated 6-12", you would have been able to reach the phone. Apples & oranges.

The phone slid forward under the heating vent between the carpet and the vent while braking. Then slid backward under the carpet between the steel and carpet during acceleration.

It would not have mattered how high the seat was, I had to remove the front passenger seat, heat vent, and some carpet to retrieve the phone.

I have little doubt that something similar could happen on a plane.

kdonnel · Mar 24, 2019

Here is a video showing the interior of an airplane being installed. Lots of places for stuff to be lost.

I have been on many planes where the side panels are loose. Something dropped just wrong is lost until the interior is ripped out during a maintenance check or refurbishment.

cabanafrau · Mar 25, 2019

I know someone who had their phone pickpocketed in an airport in Italy a couple years back. The Find My Phone feature revealed the phone was still in the airport afterwards. Airport security said it's a common problem there and thieves frequently have ditched phones in an airduct to avoid being apprehended. The real bummer in this case is the person didn't actually own the phone, but was paying for it as part of some offer. So they couldn't get the phone back and had to keep paying for it for several months.

tinkerdorabelle · Mar 25, 2019

Sorry to hear that especially being out of the country without your phone. I hope she gets it back but I also hope that she let the airline know what happened. Did she tell them? I think it's very important they know.

Phone lost in hull of plane

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